The Great Within

Mx Justin Vivian Bond, The Chanteuse of the New Millennium

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:01:00 +0000

“A bar of gold in the new depression”- Hilton Als describing Mx Justin Vivian Bond

This past Sunday 20 November 2011 I had the pleasure of seeing Mx Justin Vivian Bond perform at Joe’s Pub for the third time. I have encountered Mx Bond since the mid-1990’s when Mx performed at SqueezeBox! and hosted a party in the East Village called Foxy. Mx’s biting, about to go off the rails, wit provided endless moments of laughter and her passionate singing performances were also characterized by a liminal apocalyptic abandon that was appealing in the 1990’s queer landscape and simultaneously frightening as if Mx might cut you.

Photographs courtesy of JS

And I have seen Mx perform as the character Kiki, the grotesque, over the hill lounge singer of the duo Kiki & Herb. Those performances too were both alluring and seemingly dangerous. Where did Justin end and Kiki begin? Kiki might just cut you too.

Mx’s cabaret shows that I have seen at Joe’s Pub are no less passionate, no less overflowing with liminal apocalyptic abandon, but the songs Mx sings and those sung particularly on Sunday 20 November 2011. are replete with melancholy, loss and pain.

In contrast, Justin’s banter between songs is incredibly witty, funny and at times vulgar. Mx knows that the emotional intensity of the songs would be too much to bear without some relief, without some laughter. So, on Sunday, Mx recounted getting regular blowjobs from a seedy cab driver in the mid 90’s, volunteering as a candy striper as a teenager, falling in love with a fellow female volunteer, winning a Kate Bush album on the radio, playing the entire album over the phone for the teenage object of her affection. Laughter filled the room.

But while we (I) may enjoy the banter between songs, hearing Justin sing is why we (I) come again and again. As I wrote here the last time I saw Mx perform: While Justin Bond can be devilishly funny, her choice of songs and the manner in which she sings are full of longing and loss. They are always replete with tough emotion. They are poignant. They are cathartic. In this sense her form and content expresses what is essentially human: that life is about loss- loss of youth, loss of love, loss of friends and family. And despite our best efforts and the capitalist myths of everlasting life that surround us, we can never escape this haunting truth. Mx Justin Vivian Bond is the Chanteuse of the New Millennium.

Read my other posts about Mx Justin Vivian Bond here, here, here and see clips of Mx’s performances.

You Can’t Take It With You, But You Could Certainly Try…

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 04:58:00 +0000

“When you're dead, you're dead. That's it.”- Marlene Dietrich

The day before his death William S Burroughs wrote, “Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller. What there is . . . LOVE…”

We let it in
We give it out
And in the end
What's it all about?
It must be love- Kate Bush, “And So Is Love”

And if a double-decker bus
Crashes into us
To die by your side
Is such a heavenly way to die
And if a ten ton truck
Kills the both of us
To die by your side
Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine- The Smiths, “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”

And as your last breath begins, you'll find your demon’s your best friend, and we all get it in the end- Scott Matthews, “In The End” as sung by Mx Justin Vivian Bond

The Grave of Marlene Dietrich. The headstone states, “Here I stand at the mile-stone of my days.”

The Grave of William S. Burroughs

Mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx

Recently, before having dinner with my goddaughter Nora, her parents and her older brother and sister, the subject of what we wanted to happen to our bodies after our death came up for discussion among the adults. A____, Nora’s mother, said she wanted to be cremated. Her husband, P____, agreed. My answer was a bit different and way more 19th century. “I want a mausoleum,” I said, “with a bronze pierced doorway that a visitor can look through and there see my bronze coffin raised on a stone plinth. On either side of the mausoleum door, I want large weeping angel sculptures with my name chiseled in stone above the doorway.”

P____ was amused and A____ was horrified. How could I envision such an ungreen, space hogging, archaic ending for my life. She said that if I died before her, she would just cremate me anyway. And I said I would haunt her for all eternity if she went against my wishes. I know my goddaughter who will be the executor of my will (which will explicitly detail the funding and building of the mausoleum with all my specifications) will carry out my wishes no matter what her mother says.

According to an eerily accurate psychic that I saw almost 20 years ago, I am supposed to live to the ripe old age of 96 which is fine with me as long as I have my mind. The year of my death will be 2063. Nora will be 54 years old. And she will sell all of my antiques and build my mausoleum and I will in a sense live forever.

The year is 2140. 2 young people are touring the cemetery where I am interred in my little house with the weeping angels. They read my name above the door and Google it with the chip in their brain. They discover this blog and while picnicking at my eternal front door, they read The Great Within and they are impressed. They laugh, they cry, they think. They read this post about my mausoleum and they enjoy a self-reflexive post(post)postmodern moment.

In our discussion of death that night P____, Nora’s father, rightly concluded that after one generation, no one comes to visit your grave anyway and even the generation after you sometimes doesn’t even bother to come. But, there are always those random visitors to the cemetery and Google and eternal digital life.

One may think it is odd that I am thinking about my death at this moment in my life. A friend recently described me as “vibrant”- an accurate assessment which is a wonderful feeling after so many difficult years in which I struggled with depression. Now the right combination of doctors and medicine has given me a new life fostered above all by the presence of my goddaughter, Nora. When I wrote recently that, “She saved my life”, I was not being dramatic or grandiose. She really did rescue me from the dark depths.

So, why am I slightly obsessed with my own passing and my own afterlife in a mausoleum? My desire to have a mausoleum for my remains is half in jest and half (pardon the pun) deadly serious. Death sucks. It is not romantic or spiritual; it is dirty and banal and simply a part of life. And perhaps I want my beautiful mausoleum to counter death’s dirtiness and banality with a small aesthetic jewel that will say with its presence- “I was here, I slogged through all the shit of the world and I survived.” I am eternal and so is this blog.

And I don’t think you ever get over losing a loved one. It’s like losing a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. There are holes and gaps that distort the picture and leave empty spaces in your heart. You, of course, do move on from loss in death, but only because that is really the only response.

There are several holes in my puzzle- my maternal grandmother Hedwig, my paternal grandmother Anne, my step-grandmother Emma, Aunt Mimi, Aunt and of course more empty spaces will be created as I get older, but we can all take comfort because eventually we will all be together in the splendid, many roomed palace in the sky.

But my body will be in a bronze coffin resting on a plinth in a stone mausoleum with a bronze gated doorway with weeping angels on either side. Above the door chiseled in stone- “Kelly T Keating 1967-2063. He survived the shit…”

Here are some pictures that are sources of inspiration for the design of my mausoleum:

Tomb of Napoleon at Les Invalides, Paris, France.

Cenotaph of Archduchess Maria Christina, Duchess of Teschen (1742-1798) by Antonio Canova, Augustinerkirche, Vienna, Austria. The Archduchess is actually buried in the Tuscan Vault of the Imperial Crypt in Vienna, along with her husband and daughter, Maria Theresa who only lived one day.

Maria Christina before she turned to dust at the age of 24 in 1766 by an unknown artist. She was called "Mimi", was the fourth daughter and fifth child of Maria Theresa of Austria and Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor. She was the Regent (governor) of the Austrian Netherlands in 1781-1793.

Cenotaph of Archduchess Maria Christina detail.

Cenotaph of Archduchess Maria Christina detail. This angel is what I want for my mausoleum and of course my tomb won’t be empty. My body will be in a bronze coffin lined with satin, my head on a satin pillow.

Henri Chapu, Detail of the Tomb of Helene, the Duchess of Orléans, 1885, marble, life-size, Royal Chapel, Dreux.

Helene Luise Elisabeth of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Duchess of Orleans (1814–1858) holding her son, Philippe by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1839, oil on canvas, Palace of Versailles. She was a French Crown Princess after her marriage in 1837 to the eldest son of Louis Philippe I, Ferdinand Philippe of Orléans. She was the mother of the future Count of Paris and Duke of Chartres. Her descendants include the present Count of Paris as well the present-day pretenders to the throne of France and Italy and the kings of Spain and Belgium.

Memorial to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette by Edme Gaulle and Pierre Petitot in the Basilica of St. Denis, Paris.

Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine by Jacques-Louis David, 1793, pen and ink, Louvre, Paris.

Tomb of the Duke of Clarence by Alfred Gilbert, 1892-1899, marble, bronze, aluminum, ivory, Albert Memorial Chapel, Windsor. Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale (Albert Victor Christian Edward; 1864 – 1892) was the eldest son of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and Alexandra, Princess of Wales (later Queen Alexandra), and the grandson of the reigning monarch, Queen Victoria.

Detail of Tomb of The Duke of Clarence. The angel is made out of aluminum.

Mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx

Candy Darling on Her Deathbed by Peter Hujar

The Antique Flâneur and The Petite Flâneuse Stroll Through the City- 9 November 2011 Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:33:00 +0000

“Gran Elefandret” in Union Square by by the Spanish artist Miquel Barceló. Made of bronze, it weighs five tons and stands 26 feet tall.

On Wednesday morning 9 November 2011 at 9am I was receiving the delivery of my new (and by new I mean new to me, but old to everyone else, probably 1930’s in date) walnut bookcase to be placed in my bedroom. The giant 7 foot tall bookcase in the drawing room has been overflowing with books for months now and there was simply no place to put a new title- a condition that to me was unacceptable. Without new books one stagnates.

I found my bookcase in Long Valley, New Jersey. It is not only beautiful with its 3 glasses doors with wood tracery, but it will hold many books and will hopefully for awhile contend with my literary overflow. What will happen when this bookcase is filled is anybody’s guess.

Until I need it. I decided that the center area of the bookcase will be dedicated to the display of objets d’art which as you know dear readers I have plenty of things tucked away in cabinets far from the light of day ready to have their moment. Stay tuned.

Since I had the delivery at 9, I was going to take care of my goddaughter for the day starting at 10. I met her and her mother in Union Square where A____, her mother and my non-blood sister, had a meeting. From Union Square Nora and I set out for Bryant Park to ride Le Carrousel. What follows is what we saw along the way…what an adventure…

We first saw the giant bronze elephant standing in great defiance of gravity on its trunk in Union Square. Nora was thrilled by the site of it and I must admit so was I. It is a wonderful and whimsical piece of urban public art.

From Union Square, we headed up Broadway and stopped in at ABC Home where we were dazzled by the sparkling Christmas display. Of course, my favorite ornament there was a blown glass polar bear. I should be a polar bear, but it’s impossible…

On our way up Broadway, I noticed some lovely architectural details on a building around 18th or 19th.

A corner embellishment with a blank cartouche.

A neoclassical bell flower motif around a doorway. It reminded me of the “Medallion” teapot by Reed & Barton also with bell flowers, circa 1865-68 in my collection.

Neoclassical “Medallion” silverplate teapot by Reed & Barton, circa 1865-1868.

Bellflower detail on Medallion pot.

Our next stop was Design Within Reach. I must admit that I was a little out of my element here, me being a 19th century kind of fella, but I could certainly appreciate all of the fab pieces in the store.

Chandeliers made out of resin.

Ghost chair. I find these chairs really appealing and there is part of me that would like one for my drawing room.

Side table made of wood dipped in pure silver. Gorgeous and pricey.

After Design Within Reach, Nora and I stopped into Restoration Hardware as I wanted to look at their Christmas ornaments. Don’t go- their Christmas stuff is sh*t. I did however like:

Giant birdcage chandelier- wacky and makes you feel like you are living in a dollhouse.

Mannerist Wing Chairs- Expensive distortion of a classic.

Faux fur throw- I should be a polar bear, but it’s impossible…

The highlight of our trip to Bryant Park was a stop at the Showplace Antique Center. On our way there we passed this intricate gate.

If only the drawing room had a fireplace…

Nicely priced brass elephant. It would be fab as a centerpiece on a glass dining table with a pair of chandeliers and this trumpeter in the center.

Brass duck head detail on red metal bench.

More duck heads on metal harp/shield back black chairs. These chairs really appealed to me.

Anyone need a giant porcelain cat for the living room?

Nora really liked this zebra footstool. Elvis Presley jungle room anyone?

Stone garden Sphinx.

Sky bridge over 32nd Street. Still think these would make fab apartments.

Finally, Nora and I arrived at Bryant Park and headed to Le Carrousel. When we boarded the ride, “Je ne regrette rien” sung by Edith Piaf was playing. Soundtrack of my life…Nora decided to ride the lone frog instead of a horse.

I stood next to her, so she would not fall off the amphibian. The ride started and it goes a bit fast for little kids and even me. Nora became scared and since we were the only people on the ride, I made the operator stop it. (Well, even if it was full of people, I would have made him stop it. What my goddaughter wants, my goddaughter gets.) So, we moved to the sedate bench decorated with peacock feathers and enjoyed the rest of the merry-go-round.

Bryant Park has a wonderful French feeling and that day it was teeming with cute boys- office drones let out for lunch. Delicious. Our last stop before heading back downtown was the Library lions on Fifth Avenue. Nora thought they were fab and growled her approval.

Recently Acquired Images of The Forbidden City

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 12:04:00 +0000

As regular readers of my blog know, its title The Great Within is the literal translation of the Chinese characters for The Forbidden City. The Forbidden City is the conceptual framework of this blog, not only as a real, historical and physical place, but also as a site of my own fantasy, a displaced and sublimated artifact of my own desire.

Regular readers also know that I am fixated on a particular part of The Forbidden City: The Garden of Forgotten Favorites. This Garden was an area of the city in which concubines of a dead Emperor languished until death. I fantasize about being an Imperial concubine sadly out of a job, whose official life was over and who now waited for death surrounded by splendor.

This obsession has lead me to look for old images of The Forbidden City that might provide a concrete image of my fantastical concubine desire and provide a border, the photographic frame, to locate my obsession.

I almost exclusively look for old images of The Forbidden City especially at the end of the Qing Dynasty as I am always fascinated by the end of things, when the great project falls apart and utopian dreams become a dystopian reality.

I recently found this late 19th century stereoscope card of The Forbidden City (see below) made during the regency of Tzu Hsi of Cixi (1835-1908) who was the defacto ruler of China from 1861 until her death in 1908. She installed Puyi as the last Emperor of China on November 14 the day before her death.

Puyi would “rule” China until he was forced to leave The Forbidden City in 1924. During World War II he would become the puppet Emperor the Japanese created state of Manchukuo in Manchuria.

Puyi at 3 years old with his father Prince Chun and his younger brother

Puyi in 1922

Puyi as Emperor of Manchukuo (1932-1945)

In the movie, The Last Emperor, there is a scene where Puyi is brought to The Forbidden City to become Emperor and see Cixi who is seated on a plinth and all tricked out. She is dying and the Buddhist monks are chanting. When she dies a giant black pearl is placed in her mouth…swoon. That’s how I want to leave this earth.

Late 19th Century Stereoscope of The Gate of Supreme Harmony with forecourt and canal after one enters The Forbidden City through the Meridian Gate

The caption of the stereoscope reads, “Within The Forbidden City, home of the Empress Dowager- Harmony Gate from elevated walk near Canal, Peking China.” Standing in marked contrast to the caption is the image itself in which the forecourt looks a bit run down, covered with weeds, the madness of weeds. Amidst this decay, stands a lone male figure, a eunuch perhaps, who is not the Dowager Empress, but a lowly servant standing alone against a desolate landscape. This stereoscope foretells the end of the Qing Dynasty and I revel in its dystopian decay in a haze of decadence.

Stereoscope detail

Other recently acquired images of The Forbidden City:

Postcard of The Gate of Supreme Harmony 1910-1930

The Gate of Supreme Harmony circa late 1920’s

Written on the reverse: “Near entrance to a building in Forbidden City- Peking, China, Apr. 16, 1929

The Hall of Supreme Harmony, late 1920’s

Strolling Through the City with The Antique Flâneur and The Petite Flâneuse…

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 02:55:00 +0000

The sky on 20 October 2011 in New York City

When I take care of my goddaughter on Thursdays, we travel to the East Village in mid-morning to go to music class taught by the very chipper, very enthusiastic, very effervescent M____, former Carnival Cruise performer. I jest; she is a great teacher for the toddlers in the class. And honestly, 45 minutes of making whopping noises, singing la la la, pounding a beat on the floor and singing songs like Shoo Fly Shoo is good for the adult soul.

After class Thursday 20 October it was such a beautiful day, I decided we should have a Flâneur and a Petite Flâneuse moment and stroll around the city. So, we set off from music class on a lovely sojourn. The clouds were so beautiful that day, creating all kinds of shapes and movement in the sky. I’m cloudbusting daddy…

As we walked my goddaughter and I often do call and response singing while we walk. I sing “Dee dee…” and she replies, “Do do…” and so on. It is fun and a way for us to keep connected while she is in the stroller and I am pushing it behind her.

Our first stop on our journey was St. Mark’s Comics. I needed to get my goddaughter’s older brother who is 9 a comic book, comics being a fairly recent interest. G is a wonderful, creative kid, bursting with artistic talent and ideas, He draws constantly coming up with new characters and new storylines as he produces his own comics. The latest group of characters are called The Maniacs with creepy figures such as Dr. Knife, Gemini and Doll. It’s totally fab.

The Maniacs by GTW, pencil on paper, 2011

Earlier in the week I had taken him to Manhattan Comics on 23rd Street across from Madison Square Park. I had noticed it on the bus one day and knew that he had not been there. There, he bought one of the new 52 number ones by DC Comics- their reboot of 52 characters. G bought a Superman comic with our impervious hero (I am, I am Superman and I can do anything…) wearing jeans, work boots and his signature “S” top.

Since my goddaughter and I were close to St. Marks Comics I decided to buy Superman #2 there which had just come out for a Halloween present for G. Along the way on St. Marks Place we saw this pile of pumpkins, seemingly tossed without care in front of a store.

Unfortunately, St. Mark’s Comics was sold out of Action Comics Superman #2, but I did find N___ a My Little Pony for Halloween. It’s swell.

Luckily, Manhattan Comics on 23rd Street had a #2 Superman. Here is the cover:

Um….hmmm…a bit homoerotic no? The invincible Superman is tied down to what appears to be an electric chair. His shirt is ripped; his muscles are straining against the restraints. His eyes are red with fury, passion, anger, desire and he is being confronted by four very phallic guns. What is the narrative here?

To make our way from the East Village to Madison Square Park where the comic shop is located, N___ and I walked up Broadway and then onto Park Avenue at Union Square where we stopped at Starbucks for a treat. Vanilla cookies for her. (Godfather’s prerogative.) and an iced skinny vanilla latte for me. We continued up Park, enjoying our call and response singing while I took pictures of interesting architectural elements.

One of the first buildings of note that we passed was the old Union Square Savings Bank which was built in 1905-1907 according to the designs of Henry Bacon. The style is classical academic with its Roman temple-like front with Corinthian columns.

I love the windows on the side of the building with the giant mullions of circles in squares and rectangles.

Next, I noticed an interesting frieze on The Mills & Grubb Building at 300 Park Avenue at 22nd Street consisting of a central cartouche framed by 2 cherubs.

The building was built in 1910 and the frieze demonstrates its Beaux Arts style which is an academic neo-classical style that was influential in America from 1880-1920 and was often eclectic in its selection of decorative motifs.

My goddaughter and I continued up Park Avenue until we came to the MetLife buildings on Madison Square Park. The Met Life Tower was built in 1909 as the new headquarters of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. It was added to the original 1893 headquarters. The 700ft, 51 stories tall building was modeled on the campanile at St. Mark's Square in Venice. When constructed, it was the tallest building in the world. It would keep that title until the completion of the Woolworth Building in 1913.

Next to the MetLife tower, across 24th street, is another Metropolitan Life Insurance building, known as the North Building. Originally, this Art Deco building was designed to be an immense 100 story tall tower. This tower would give the title of the world's tallest building back to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, but the Great Depression made an abrupt end to these plans: only the 29 first floors were built before construction was stopped in 1932 and finally completed in 1950.

Here are some pictures of the fabulous and superb Deco details of the 1930’s building:

My favorite part of this group of buildings is the sky bridge that spans East 24th Street.

I always thought a sky bridge would make a fabulous apartment. Looking at the sky bridge on the 2o October I was reminded once again of Roland Barthes statement, “There is where I want to live…” As Barthes says the womb is the only place we all surely have been and the desire, my desire, to live in the air in a sky bridge is in the end a desire for the womb, for the pre-Oedipal, for an existence where one has not been castrated by language. Where there is no I, where there is only one. Thank you Mr. Lacan.

From Madison Square Park we continued east back to her apartment. On our way home we passed another great Art Deco building Gramercy House at 235 East 22nd Street which was built in 1930 by George and Edward Blum.

In contrast to this Deco design we passed a single story 19th century structure on East 19th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. I love its false stepped pediment, crenellated applied molding and offset door and window. It is amazing that such a structure has survived in the modern urban landscape.

There is where I want to live…

As we made our way over to 1st Avenue and home, other things caught our eye as we circled back around and walked east across 23rd Street.

Opera Guild Thrift Shop Window- Fab 1960’s matching coat and dress.

Detail of 1960’s ensemble.

Deli Flowers

The End

NORA NOODLE OF NEW YORK CITY

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 03:50:00 +0000

My goddaughter Nora is now 2 years old and I am lucky enough to be her Mary Poppins two and a half days every week. Spending so much time with her and watching her grow is the great joy of my life. But, there was a point in my life not many years ago where everything seemed to stop, became routine, desperate and full of anguish and then suddenly a new story begins and a little girl comes into the world and hope emerges where before there was little. I thank god everyday for her; she saved my life.

When she was born, she had a birthmark on her head underneath her hair and this mark started me thinking that she was somehow very special. So, with this thought in mind, I wanted to create something for her that demonstrated how important she was to me and something that she would have for the rest of her life.

So, I wrote a story about her and about me becoming her nanny(with some good input and editing from my dear friend DS). Nora Noodle of New York City is the title. I found a wonderful artist named Chris Ams who brought the book alive with fantastic illustrations. And he handmade a book for her. I cannot thank him enough. Go to his website. Hire him! He is also a very talented jazz/soul singer as well.

Once upon a time, millions of years ago, there lived a little angel in Heaven. Her name was Nora Noodle. She had sparkly silver butterfly wings with edges of brilliant pink.

Time had no meaning in Heaven, and Nora Noodle could do whatever her heart desired. She spent never ending sunny days playing hide ‘n’ seek in the fields and woods with the other cherubs, swimming in the sparkling blue waters trying to catch golden frogs, listening to the older angels playing beautiful music on their lutes and eating sweet cakes filled with raspberry jam. Life was full of timeless wonderment and fun.

One day as she was gathering flowers, she suddenly heard the Great Voice speaking to her. "Nora Noodle, it is time for you to go to Earth to begin your life as a mortal child." Now, Nora Noodle had overheard hushed whispers about earth from the older angels, but she was not quite sure what it was. However, when the Great Voice asked you to do something, you did it and didn't ask any questions. To prepare her for her adventure on Earth, The Great Voice kissed her head leaving a mark that glittered silver and gold in the moonlight of Earth.

Suddenly, everything was quiet. Nora could no longer hear the singing birds or feel the gentle breeze of Heaven.

THEN WHOOSH! WET! UNDER WATER!

Nora Noodle heard voices, but they did not sound like the singing voices of angels. They were deeper and sharper, but also sweet. And then she heard another sound. A sound she had never heard before. Someone was crying, someone was screaming...and suddenly Nora Noodle realized that this sound was coming from her own mouth.

She looked up and saw her new family: a tall gentle daddy with red hair, a beautiful mommy with dark hair and eyes, a caring older sister with long golden hair and an older brother with a quick warm smile and devilish freckles. When the family saw the glittering mark on Nora Noodle's head, they knew she was special.

As days passed, Nora Noodle realized she could not walk, run or play as she once had, but could merely lie about or be held by her new family. They were kind and comforted her when she was upset. The beautiful mommy gave her the sweetest, warmest milk that Nora Noodle had ever tasted. It was better than anything she had ever eaten in Heaven. She liked her new life, even though she was just a little bit scared.

One day the beautiful mommy with the dark hair and eyes got a new job. Someone would have to watch Nora Noodle when the beautiful mommy was at work. For many years the family had known a gentlemen named The Flâneur. He lived alone with many beautiful, old things. He coveted his collections, and spent many hours alone searching for the finest art. Its beauty intrigued him, as did its history. He also was known to stroll throughout New York City. And in this activity, too, he was an observer, looking for beauty as others played, shopped for groceries, walked their dogs, and went about their daily lives. Although he was content he was sometimes sad and felt alone. One day, it occurred to him that perhaps he could take care of Nora Noodle!

The family agreed! On sunny days The Flâneur would take Nora Noodle out in her carriage and the two would stroll together throughout New York City. Nora Noodle loved to stroll through the city. So many sights and sounds that she had never seen or heard in Heaven fascinated her. Together they were The Flâneur and The Petite Flâneuse.

On some days it was difficult for The Flâneur to get Nora Noodle to take her naps. Sleep annoyed Nora Noodle. She had never slept in Heaven. Why should she have to sleep now?! And besides, she might miss something when she was asleep, something important.

But The Flâneur understood these things about Nora Noodle. He could sense her curiosity and emerging passion for life. So, even with the fussing and crying, The Flâneur loved to be with her and felt great happiness. Sometimes, he was even able to get Nora Noodle to sleep, if only for a short while.

And as the days passed, The Flâneur smiled more and was happier. He realized that Nora Noodle was sent from Heaven by The Great Voice as a special gift to her family and The Flâneur for all of them to love and cherish. To be sharing so much love and happiness was a wonderful feeling, and Nora realized that living on earth was even better than being in Heaven.

And they all lived happily ever after… and Nora Noodle even learned to love going to sleep.

Silver Desire: My London Booty

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:54:00 +0000

Detail Apollo Flaying Marsyas by Antonio Corradini, 1719-23, marble, Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

On my recent trip to London I did not visit the extraordinary London Silver Vaults as I had done in 2010. I would have loved to have seen Mr. David Shure again, the elegant dealer with the posh accent and pink cuff linked shirt who sold me a gorgeous sterling tea strainer hallmarked Walker & Hall, Sheffield, 1935. (Read about my visit here.)

Tea Strainer

Instead on this trip I decided to find other venues that sold silver. My lovely friend Sarah, herself a dealer here in New York City of American Aesthetic silverplate and English Aesthetic pottery (Visit her online Trocadero store for fabulous finds.) suggested that I go to the antique market at Bermondsey. The market is located near London Bridge and is know for having good silver.

The Bermondsey Market starts at about 4am and ends around 1pm and is held only on Fridays. Since I was staying in Brentford, I would have to take a commuter train to Waterloo Station and then the Jubilee tube line to London Bridge. So, I took at 6:09am train to Waterloo and I arrived at the market at 7am.

Bermondsey is a small market full of quality stuff and friendly dealers. There was a great deal of silver on offer as well as jewelry, porcelain, antique drawings, yet silver, sterling and plate was predominant. My first purchase was from a lovely dealer named Sallie who also has a stall on Portobello Road. She had some beautiful things especially a great selection of silver handled paper knives with ivory blades. Gorgeous.

A pierced ladle grabbed my attention. It was a large sugar sifter or saupoudreuse, literally “sprinkler” in French, for sprinkling sugar or powdered sugar on berries or cakes. The piercing on the bowl is in the form of flowers and leaf sprigs and is just magnificent. The handle has a nice shield cartouche with an elaborate at least 3 letter monogram.

Looking at the marks on the sifter, I realized the piece was French sterling. Sallie said she believed it was late 19th century, circa 1880, but I had a hunch that it was perhaps a bit earlier. So, I bought the sifter for a good price.

Back in New York I researched the marks. French sterling usually has an assay mark of the head of Ceres or Minerva which was a guarantee for large items assayed in Paris. The ladle did have the Ceres head seen at the top of the photograph on the right. It also had another head mark called a Michelangelo or more commonly Le Viellard, The Old Man. It is the third mark done in the photograph. The Old Man denoted the purity of the piece to be .950 silver which is higher than the sterling standard of .925.

When these 2 marks appear together it indicates a date of 1819-1838. Also, the Le Viellard mark only appears during that Bourbon Restoration period.

Yet, who was the maker of the sugar sifter? There is another small mark between the heads, unevenly struck and rubbed, of a hammer and crescent. Additionally, there is a C & D letter mark below The Old Man mark. At first I thought the C & D marks were the maker’s initials, but could not find a corresponding match on a silver hallmark site online.

So, I turned to my colleagues at SMPub, a wonderful silver website that has a multitude of forums on all aspects and types of silver. I posted my query and pictures of the sifter and learned that the small, rubbed mark of the hammer and crescent was, indeed, the maker’s mark and the C & D marks were actually the initials of the owner, a common practice in French silver.

The hammer/crescent mark indicates the work of Jean-Baptiste-Vast Harleux (What a fabulous name!!!) who was in business in Paris from 1824 to 1875. This mark was only used until 1834. Therefore, my sugar sifter narrowed down further in date to the 10 year period from 1824-1834. My hunch proved correct and now I have my first piece of French silver, a saupoudreuse, and it is a beauty!

The next item I bought at Bermondsey was a beautiful reticulated and floral engraved English sterling bon bon dish in the shape of a shell. I love the shell motif in silver and have several examples of this design from different periods, but this item was my first shell of English origin. The piece is hallmarked Martin, Hall & Co. (a good maker), Sheffield, 1899.

Besides its beauty, it is a little confection, it appeals to me also as a piece of silver made at the very end of the Victorian period. In 15 short years, the 19th century will truly end, its idealism, its rationality, its sense of progress (all fictitious of course) all destroyed, all imploded with the advent of The Great War.

Besides Bermondsey, I also went earlier in my London trip to Grays Antiques off Bond Street in London. If you are looking for a wonderful piece of antique or vintage jewelry, this is the place to go. There are 2-3 silver dealers at Grays and my favorite is Arnold of AMS Antiques. (Stop in and tell him The Antique Flâneur sent you.) He has a good collection of English silverplate and sterling. I had visited him in 2010 and bought a plate engraved server which like my new shell dish was made by Martin, Hall & Co.

This visit I found a gorgeous silverplate pierced cream jug on a tripod base with paw feet with a foliate scroll handle and a hand-blown ruby red glass liner. It is rare to find a piece with its glass liner intact. The piece is unmarked, but probably dates to 1880-1900.

The shape of the creamer’s body is to me reminiscent of a very traditional, very Georgian helmet shaped creamer. This correspondence suggests a later date when Edwardian restraint replaced the overindulgent fussiness of the Victorians. Yet, a typical Georgian helmet shaped creamer is usually more tapered as the body moves towards the base and ends in a pedestal base not feet. And it has a handle that extends beyond the body of the creamer. In contrast, the tripod feet emanating from double shield cartouches and terminating in paw feet of my creamer seems to me more suggestive of the Victorian era, yet the foliate scroll handle is more traditional.

Either way in terms of date, it is a great piece and goes nicely with a George V sterling sugar basket also with a hand-blown ruby glass liner in my collection. Read about this piece here. Though not a pair, there is a nice dialogue between these 2 silver items that pleases me. I look forward to using this married pair at my next silver dessert soirée.

My trip to London allowed me to add some wonderful pieces to my silver collection. I look forward to returning to London next year and finding more silver booty. Bermondsey awaits…

An Afternoon at the National Gallery, London

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 23:03:00 +0000

A View of Big Ben from Trafalgar Square, London

On Saturday 17 September 2011 I journeyed to London by train from Brentford where I was staying with my dearest friend H____. The night before she married her longtime beau A____ in a gorgeous, intimate and heartfelt wedding in which I officiated; I even got to wear a fab black robe with bishop sleeves and black velvet trim for the occasion. The night ended at about 3am after a long day of setting up the venue (I did the gigantic, rockin’ floral arrangements for the tables of large berry branches, oak leaves and a purplish/brown leaf which was similar to eucalyptus), a night of good feelings, good food, good music and good love.

The next day I slept in a bit, but no rest for the weary, I went into London to go to the National Gallery. I had not been there since the summer of 1987, nor had I visited the museum when I was in London in the spring of 2010. (Check out my other posts about the 2010 trip here, here, here, here and here.)

When I was living in London in the summer of 1987, I was an intern at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, a small museum filled with gorgeous 17th and 18th century paintings. I did research for the museum on an upcoming exhibition on Gainsborough which took me all over London. Between moments of research and wearing white gloves while examining 18th century documents, I would always stop in the National Gallery for 15 or 20 minutes if I was close by. Mostly, I always went to look at one painting, The Execution of Lady Jane Grey by Paul Delaroche, Salon of 1834. (See my posts about this captivating work here and here.) After my brief viewing, I was then back to my research.

When I returned to the National Gallery on 17 September, I was unexpectedly overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude and quality of the National Gallery collection. I was dizzy and swooning amongst all these delicious creations in paint. Here are six works that particularly made me stop and look intently. They “grabbed me by the throat” as the art historian Simon Schama would say.

1. Saint Francis in Meditation by Francisco de Zurbarán, 1635-1639, oil on canvas, 152 x 99 cm.

In a shallow, dimly lit space Zurbarán depicts Saint Francis on his knees, hands clasped holding a skull, wearing the hooded robe of a Capuchin monk, his face in shadow, lips parted, seemingly looking up to heaven. It is a silent painting of religious devotion and contemplation, but it is also an earthly meditation on the nature of painting itself. How does one convincingly represent form, light, space on a 2 dimensional surface in the medium of paint?

The figure of Saint Francis is extremely plastic, well-modeled in light and shadow. He firmly occupies the quiet space of the work and seems almost able to enter our own realm outside the painting. His lips are parted slightly as if he is about to speak or perhaps he has heard God himself? Indeed, his right hand bears the stigmata of Christ.

This painting stopped me and “grabbed me by the throat” with its silent, simple depiction of devotion, faith, thought. As a viewer, I am a voyeur to the saint’s private act of prayer. Through my gaze I join him in the mystery of faith regardless of my own non-religious life. I feel his devotion. I meditate on it- this amorphous, unknowable, unquantifiable thing in contrast to the naturalistic, “worldly” rendering of the figure in all his physicalness, in all his solidity as if I could reach out and touch him.

Meditation on God becomes a rumination on the nature of representation and the rendering of paint. The spiritual and the natural combine and produce a powerfully evocative work of art.

2. Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart by Anthony van Dyck, circa 1638, oil on canvas, 237.5 x 146 cm.

The two brothers stand before us, Lord John on the left looks off into the distance while his brother Lord Bernard stares out at the viewer. They both have a look of smug arrogance, displaying their station in life for all to see, not only by having a large, full length portrait of themselves painted by a significant and famous artist, but also in their clothes and elegant poses. Van Dyck delights in the rendering of their costumes, in the opulence and richness of the fabric, the satin and leather and the trims of lace which adorn them and set them apart from the rest of us. Look at their magnificent shoes!

Also, notice the elegant placement and graceful rendering of the brother’s hands. The beautiful depiction of the hands which is always a Van Dyck signature confirms and exhibits their good breeding and their noble family history. All of these features combine, so that the brothers seem to be saying to the viewer, “Aren’t we fabulous?” and “We are glad that we are not you.”

Yet, when one reads the wall plaque accompanying this work, one learns that the 2 brothers supported King Charles I in the English Civil War and lost their lives in the conflict because of it. Suddenly, they are no longer smug, but simply dead or perhaps their death resulted from the very arrogance on display that also caused King Charles I to lose his head.

3. Winter Landscape by Caspar David Friedrich, circa 1811, oil on canvas, 32.5 x 45 cm.

Winter Landscape by Caspar David Friedrich is a small jewel of a painting that I would have loved to slip into my bag for my drawing room. In a beautifully rendered snowy scene, a man has thrown down his crutches and is praying at a roadside wooden crucifix seemingly asking for help with his earthly affliction.

In the left background a hallucinatory church emerges in the snow and mist. It is a promise of everlasting salvation, no matter one’s lot in the physical world. But, is it real or a vision?

The center of the composition is dominated by gigantic, majestic pine trees, still green despite the winter. The work seems to convey the beauty and pain of the natural world and how we can all be solitary, lonely figures on earth like the man with the crutches praying to the crucifix. The promise of salvation, of redemption, of heaven (represented by the church) is there to greet us all upon our death and take away all of our pain and surround and enmesh us in a beauty greater than the material world, here evoked by the pine trees. Winter Landscape is a deeply moving work, seemingly simple, more than just the depiction of nature, but a meditation on the meaning of life.

4. Portrait of a Young Man by Titian, circa 1515-1520, oil on canvas, 92 x 70 cm.

This painting by Titian is a bit of a gratuitous choice. I was drawn to this work not merely because of Titian’s ability to deliciously render fabrics and textures in paint along with his beautiful sense of coloring, light and shadow- just look at his ability to render the black silk of the sitter’s costume- but because I thought the subject was dead sexy. He has a strong nose and jaw and along with his hair his overall appearance could be that of a 21st century hipster if it were not for his 16th century fashion.

He looks contemplative as he stares out at what we don’t know. This far away gaze makes him more appealing to me and allows me to visibly apprehend him without him catching me looking. I can admire his beauty and his rockin’ threads.

Also, there is something decidedly sexual about his one ungloved right hand. He holds the right hand glove in his left hand that rests on the parapet which separates his world from mine. All that is visible on the right hand is the thumb that emerges strikingly from the folds of black silk fabric. For me the ungloved, luminous thumb appearing out of the “darkness” is a displacement of the young gentlemen’s penis. The portrait changes from contemplative to sexual to masturbation to exhibitionism. Or is it just me? I have always had this notion that the shape and appearance of a man’s thumb corresponds to some degree to the shape and appearance of his penis. So, perhaps when I look at this painting, my understanding of it is predetermined. No, I don’t think so. It is an erotic and sexual image and it all resides in that thumb.

5. Two Boys Blowing Bubbles by Caspar Netscher. circa 1670. oil on oak, 31 x 24 cm.

This 17th century Dutch painting is a small jewel. I would have it on my wall in a dead second. It has a gorgeous, glossy enamel finish, a licked surface, and the subject is sweet and endearing without being saccharine. Two boys are blowing bubbles an ageless, simple pastime that children still enjoy today. (My goddaughter loves blowing bubbles.) The boy in the foreground has removed his hat and is about to pop the bubble that floats serenely in the upper left of the painting. His companion in the right background is getting ready to blow another bubble.

As with much Dutch painting. this work is not simply a genre scene of childhood play, but a vanitas. The fragility of the bubble, its short existence, is a symbol of the transience of human life and the futility of worldly possessions such as the items on the right of the parapet, a silver dish and rare, exotic shells.

It has always fascinated how a society so capitalistic and mercantile like Dutch society in the 16th and 17th centuries also felt so guilty about its materialism and had to continually produce images that reminded everyone how all this worldly stuff meant shit and that in the end you were just going to be dust. You cannot take it with you.

The underlying vanitas goal of the painting helps to contain its sentimentality, so that it does not becoming cloying. It prevents a toothache. In the end, Netscher produces a magnificent work both grave and touching. It reminds us of the simple joys of childhood as well as the fragile nature of life in a luscious rendering of paint.

6. Interior by Vilhelm Hammershøi, 1899, oil on canvas, 64 x58 cm.

Before seeing this painting I was not familiar with the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi. Interior is an arresting work overflowing with mystery and psychological tension. In a closed, sparse interior, a dining room, (there is no way out; the doors are closed, there are no windows) a woman stands with her back to the viewer. She refuses our gaze, ignores our presence and rejects her position as an object to be visually apprehended.

But what is narrative or subject of this painting? Is she waiting for someone? Is it a scene of quiet domesticity or domestic frustration? Has there just been an argument and now she is left alone in the dining room in its aftermath? Is she going crazy? This polysemy and lack of closure is testament to the work’s modernity and evokes the isolation, mental and otherwise, that seems to plaque all of us in the modern, capitalist world and continues to grow with the advancement of technology and its effacement of the body.

Hammershøi painted the interior of this house depicted here more than sixty times- sometimes just empty rooms or sometimes with his wife either from the back or in profile reading a letter or book. Interior is a contemplative work on one hand, but also on the other an obsession, a madness as if the artist continually depicted the interior of his house and his wife to figure out something that continually alluded his grasp.

So, if you are ever in London, run to the National Gallery and delight in its myriad of visual treasures.

The Sun Shines Out of Our Behinds on East 2oth Street in New York City

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 23:50:00 +0000

Pontormo, Vertumnus and Pomona, 1520-21, left side of lunette in the Poggio a Caiano, Villa Medici.

Today, walking east on 20th Street, past First Avenue between Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, I suddenly found myself within a gaggle of teenager girls and boys all about 14, all talking, all listening to their IPods, with some riding skateboards. I could not seem to extricate myself from this pubescent group, so I overheard bits of their conversations. One exchange struck me in particular. A stylish boy in skinny jeans and colored topsiders related to his girl friend about his certain boy crush. The crush had just texted him and he did not want to appear to eager, he said to his friend.

This exchange made me smile and chuckle a bit. In my suburban dystopia at the age of 14 I was still in the closet. Not that my closet was a bad place; it was full of fantasy, desire, passion, Wonder Woman. Things only became tricky or uncomfortable when my queer self engaged with the very heterosexual world of my growing up like in the boys locker room in junior high. But still that became fodder for the pleasures of the closet in the end.

I thought to myself walking along East 20th Street how lucky this stylish boy was to be so young and so open about his sexuality and how the recent passage of marriage equality in New York State must be for him so life affirming and joyous. And as the teenage group passed me and the stylish boy moved out of my life, I thought, I hope you and your crush love each other till we all turn to dust.

The Smiths Hand in Glove live on Spanish TV in 1985

Miss Havisham finally walks down the aisle…

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 10:24:00 +0000

Recently, a same-sex marriage bill was passed and signed into law in New York. It is a tremendous historical moment for non-heterosexuals and I thank everyone who worked so very hard for many years to ensure its passage. And it is fitting that this law was enacted a day before the Gay Pride Parade here in New York City.

Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, it never occurred to me that non-heterosexuals such as myself would one day be able to marry in a legal sense. Non-heterosexual visibility in my suburban world at the time was relegated to the very negative or to camp- Paul Lynn on Hollywood Squares or Billy Crystal on Soap. Not that this visibility really bothered me in my closet which was bursting with spectacular and unashamed desire. I found ways to express and solidify my queerness and accepted this fact within myself and then reconciled it with the world both heterosexual and non-heterosexual when I was 18.

In other posts on The Great Within, I have often compared myself to Miss Havisham still wearing her wedding dress amidst the cobwebs. Marriage equality in New York does nothing to alter that feeling. When I learned this law was passed, I was both happy and full of regret and sadness.

My Miss Havisham will probably never walk down the aisle. Even dating for me has been enduring a long drought, mainly because I don’t feel very attractive or desirable; my age and body make me feel invisible too.

This state of being bothers me at times, but mostly it feels strangely right.

Queering the Image 9: Venus and Adonis by Paul Cadmus and Marriage Equality

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:27:00 +0000

Paul Cadmus, Venus and Adonis, 1936, tempera and oil on linen on pressed wood panel, 28 5/8” x 32 1/2”, Forbes Magazine Collection.

Painted in 1936 by Paul Cadmus, Venus and Adonis is a humorous, sexual and perhaps misogynistic mediation on marriage and heterosexuality through the modern retelling of a Greek myth. The origin of the characters is suggested by the decidedly classical landscape in which they are portrayed. Within this reminiscent landscape, a shirtless Adonis is as expected tall, handsome, muscular and here presented as a contemporary tennis player proudly holding and displaying his racket and 2 (tennis) balls. With a look of disgust, he attempts to escape from his beloved Venus, here no modern goddess, but a figure out of Rubens who clings with desperation to Adonis. Heightening his disdain is the presence of (their?) screaming child, Cupid, located to the right of his mother. Adonis wishes to leave the social convention of wife/mother/child in order to join the other male tennis player in the left background for a match and use his racket and 2 balls. If the sexual nature of the 2 tennis players is not explicit enough Cadmus has inserted a black dog in the left foreground who appears to be licking himself.

The posting of Venus and Adonis seems appropriate to me at this particular historical moment in which same-sex marriage has been recently legalized in New York. I am not against marriage for non-heterosexuals. If anyone wants to get married they should have the right to do so.

What does trouble, however, is that the legalization of same-sex marriage while a civil rights achievement, is also an enactment of conformity for non-heterosexuals to a decidedly heterosexual principle rather than a transformation of that principle and the entire dominant fiction itself. Symmetry is not always the most desired or most radical result. As Françoise d’Eaubonne (1920-2005), a French feminist who introduced the term ecofeminism in 1974 states, “You say that our task is to integrate homosexuals into society, while I say it is to disintegrate society through homosexuality.”

And what would Mr. Cadmus say about marriage equality if he were still alive? Does his Adonis have only one tennis partner? Does he dream of marriage or is it just the same as the scene depicted, but with different players?

Queering the Image 8: Gilding the Acrobats by Paul Cadmus

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 18:54:00 +0000

*A Note to Readers- I must apologize dear readers for my dearth of posts so far in 2011. Unfortunately, real world events have been demanding much of my time and I have not been motivated to write about anything in particular. Hopefully, today is the beginning of more frequent posts. XOXO Kelly

Paul Cadmus, Gilding the Acrobats, 1935, tempera and oil on masonite, 36.75”x18.5”, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Painted in 1935, Paul Cadmus’ Gilding the Acrobats is on one level a self-reflexive metaphor for the act of painting itself; Cadmus figuratively touches (paints) the splendid male bodies that he has put on display for the viewer as those bodies paint one another within the bounds of the picture’s frame. In this way, the image is on another level an expression of the homoerotic desire of the painter and the potential spectator who might gain pleasure in looking at these bodies in a private, “behind the scenes, before the show” intimate scene. The narrative of gilding sublimates and displaces the sexual nature of the scene of men touching themselves (masturbating) and touching each other behind the curtain. The painting is a self-referential spectacle of looking, touching and desire.

And what of the (black) servant who is the visual link between the standing foreground performer and the one who sits behind him. He is the only one clothed in the scene and he performs his duty with great concentration and focus. Is he part of the sexual (sublimated) narrative and desire of the scene? Is he a stand-in for the painter and/or the viewer? Or is he ignored by the narrative and the discourse of painting because of his race, as the (black) maid in Manet’s Olympia has often been, merely seen as a racist cipher of unchecked, uncultured desire?

The Past Rears Its Sometimes Ugly Head

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 10:32:00 +0000

Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to date more…but when you’re queer, older and more of a bear than a gazelle the same-sex dating pond can be a bit shallow. Okay, so I am being a bit dramatic. Thank you Miss Havisham.

The other night as I was trolling through OKCupid, I came upon a familiar face. R_____ and I had dated briefly (twice) some 10+ years ago (more of a gazelle then). Perversely, he dumped me both times. When I think about it more clearly now, his only appeal to me was probably physical and he possessed a certain sadness that always seems to appeal to me, much to my own detriment. For some reason, he got under my skin in the way sometimes people who don’t give a fuck about you do and the results were not pretty. And now thanks to the internet, I was able to remember that train wreck all over again.

In these moments of ugly memories, I often think of what William Burroughs wrote just before he died: “Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller. What there is . . . love.” I just hope I don’t have to wait till I am almost dead to realize it as he did.

This dating memory also suggests for me how the internet is an uncanny thing full of digital ghosts of the past, known and unknown, myriads of faces and bodes, clothed and naked, that are part of my past and potentially part of my future which hauntingly dance in my head. The internet is like a fixed/unfixed time machine which often prevents one from the impossibility of staying in the present. And sometimes it takes you back to an ugly, embarrassing moment in your life as you/I stare out at the limitless digital ocean of memory.

Silver Desire: A George V English Sterling Sugar Bucket on the Brink of War

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:33:00 +0000

Recently I found a gorgeous English sterling sugar bucket with a deep red purplish hand blown glass liner. The piece is hallmarked London 1914 and was made by Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Co. Ltd. a large retail jeweler and silversmith established in 1880 at 112 Regent Street in London. In 1898, the firm converted to a limited liability company and the name became Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Co. Ltd.

Hallmarks: Maker’s mark, lion passant to indicate sterling, leopard head to indicate London, date letter “t” to indicate 1914.

The sterling cage of the bucket standing on 4 delicate curved feet is comprised of several motifs. All have lovely incised decoration highlighting and enhancing their silhouette. The front of the sugar bowl features an empty shield cartouche which was intended fro the monogram of a potential owner, but here is still blank. On either side of the shield are large covered classical urns with handles. Swirling foliage attaches these 3 components. The back of the sugar bowl (opposite the cartouche) displays a bow with a quiver of arrows. On either side of this motif are again a pair of classical urns as in the front of the piece.

When I first acquired the sugar bowl, it was around Valentine’s Day and the color of the glass, the bow and arrows and the bowl’s function to deliver sweetness made me think of that holiday with its dominant red color and Cupid shooting arrows into those individuals looking for love.

Yet, as I looked at the piece the connotations of its denotations changed for me. This change of feeling was precipitated by its assay date of 1914 which is of course the year that The Great War (so-called before the more extreme horrors of World War II because no one could imagine a greater catastrophe) started and Europe was plunged into a bloodbath until 1918.

Now, the shield cartouche and the bow with its quiver of arrows became martial symbols of war, not love, the urns became funerary in nature commemorating the millions who died in the trenches and elsewhere and the deep red of the sugar bowl became their split blood. The blank, unmonogrammed space of the shield cartouche now seemed a fitting epitaph for those individuals who died in the war.

It is fascinating to me how a simple, gorgeous object can conjure up so many images beyond its function and aesthetic. It would be interesting to research English silver production during the war to see how the war influenced or did not influence style, form and ornamentation, of course taking into account what restrictions the war put on that very manufacture.

In my fantastical imagination, this sugar bowl is in a small way a response to the war and a vestige of the 19th century. 1914 was not only the start of The Great War, but also the true ending of the 19th century whose ideals, assumptions and desires were obliterated by the war, ushering in new artistic movements which rejected, transformed or redeployed the classical ideals and forms of the past in response to their own historical moment after the war.

This sugar bowl is perhaps a small monument to the war and its dead, but it is in another sense the final expression of the 19th century and a whole way of life ended by the events of 1914. I love this piece not only for its style, form and ornamentation, but also for its connotations of requiem for the dead of war and nostalgia for a dead century.

A note to readers…

I must apologize dear readers for the dearth of posts lately on The Great Within. New and continuing obligations in the real world have left me little time to ruminate here. Hopefully, more regular posting will be coming in the future. In the meantime, use the new search function to explore past essays.

Best, K.

The Great Within Receives A Stylish Blogger Award

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 21:57:00 +0000

I am quite flattered to have received a Stylish Blogger Award from Mr. Bluehaunt the author of the always fascinating and stylish blog The Haunted Lamp. Thank you Mr. Bluehaunt! It is great to know that my words and pictures are not just falling unnoticed into the void.

-As part of the award, I am to name 5 other bloggers who I consider stylish. Here they are in no particular order:

The Haunted Lamp- an eclectic and well-chosen collection of always intriguing objects and ephemera.

Babylon Baroque- a blog “devoted to that most maligned art, ornament”. It is a rich treasury of gorgeous images and thoughtful commentary.

Porcelains and Peacocks- always interesting posts on interior design, decorative and fine arts.

Chinoiserie Chic- gorgeous photographs of Chinoiserie inspired objects and interior design.

Outright Ingrate- stylish, acerbic and witty look at the joys and horrors of everyday life.

-Also as part of the award, I am to tell seven things about myself:

1. I wear many hats- purveyor of antiques, part-time Mary Poppins and floral designer.

2. Sometimes I feel like Miss Havisham from Great Expectations with my wedding cake rotting in the next room.

3. My greatest joy is my goddaughter N____.

4. I am a collector of 19th century American silver, English Edwardian silver, 19th century English Aesthetic pottery, Edwardian porcelain, pigs and vintage postcards.

5. When I was in my late 20’s and 30’s I used to be a nightlife denizen at such magical and queer places as SqueezeBox and Foxy.

6. For the last 18 years I have struggled with varying degrees of depression and anxiety, but luckily now I am feeling content.

7. Whenever I get a fountain soda and the plastic cover has those dimples "cola" "diet" "other" I always depress the "other" dimple and it makes me smile every time.

The Great Within Part III

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:31:00 +0000

The Forbidden City, The Madness of Weeds, circa 1920’s

The Great Within began in July 2009 and although it has been only a year and a half, it seems so much longer to me. And although January 2011 is not really an anniversary (1st anniversary- paper, 2nd anniversary- cotton) I felt it was time to (re)present the blog and reassert its philosophy and goals for new readers who may have joined after its inception.

First and foremost, The Great Within is a blog about images- images from art, photography, film, mass culture and even memory. My discussion of pictures from a variety of genres and mediums is informed by my studies and writings in art history. My efforts always had a theoretical cast and foundation and sought to understand how images represent sexuality and gender. And also how pictures function ideologically. The words of Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Walter Benjamin, JK Huysmans, Kaja Silverman, Monique Wittig, Angela Carter, Luce Irigaray, Jean Baudrillard, Charles Pearce, Georges Bataille, Gayle Rubin, Linda Nochlin, Griselda Pollack, Leo Bersani all inform and produce my analysis of visual representation particularly the imaging/imagining of masculinity and homosexuality. But, it is the work of Roland Barthes in his critical and profound musings on photography in Camera Lucida, his discussion of mass culture in Mythologies and his deployment and manifestation of structuralism and authorship in S/Z that I return to continually on The Great Within.

In my very first post entitled The Great Within, I discussed Barthes’ incredible ideas about photography- the studium/punctum binary, photography as identical to its referent and the that-has-been noeme of the medium in relation to images of The Forbidden City in Beijing, China:

The title of my blog, "The Great Within", is the literal translation of the Chinese characters for The Forbidden City in Beijing, China. This blog, however, is not going to be about the actual FC- its meaning, its architecture, its art. Rather, I am using photographs of the FC as a device, as a beginning, to talk about my own desire, my own great within and most importantly how these images function for me, give me meaning rather than solely the other way around.

Yet, my choice of The City is not simply arbitrary. It obviously has significant meaning for me in its actuality. Although I have never been there, I have experienced The City through documentaries, films and photographs and have gained a rudimentary knowledge of it.

For me, The Forbidden City is both a real and imagined space that precipitates my desire for images of the FC and beyond to other images, other mediums, other contexts. The FC serves as a metaphor for the musings of my own mind (My Great Within) and provides a focus for daydreams about the actual and fantastical FC particularly an area of the city known as The Garden of Forgotten Favorites. The Garden was a place within the FC where the concubines of an emperor went after their lord and master died to live out their remaining days in luxury, indolence, boredom and perhaps intrigue.

I have never seen this area of the city in a photograph (nor have I ever travelled to Beijing, China), but it’s existence of which I am certain in reality and in my mind awakens my desire and I often dream of being a concubine languishing in The Garden of Forgotten Favorites haunted by memories of my dead liege.

Kangxi Emperor (1654-1722) of the Qing Dynasty. He ruled China from 1661-1722.

These images of the FC both the photographs and the pictures in my head take me to a place beyond language, beyond culture, beyond the studium to the pre-Oedipal realm of the punctum as Barthes would say. It is the search for pictures which precipitates and evokes this response within me that informs and generates the content of The Great Within.

Here are some posts that deploy and incorporate Barthes and his profound understanding of photography:

Death/Grief/Absence/Presence: Felix and Felix

Barthesian Notes on a Photograph: Naked Dress Up by Ben Bale

Notes on a Photograph

Notes on a Photograph: A German World War II Soldier

This desire also manifests itself in my collecting of antique American silver, sterling and plate, and English Aesthetic pottery and my need to connect to the past and understand the historical and social context of the pieces in my collection:

On Collecting

Silver Desire: An Aesthetic Sugar and Creamer by Rogers Smith and Company

The Twilight of Silver Utensil Madness

And here are some other posts which make me smile:

The Absent Body: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, AIDS, Homosexuality and Representation

The Nautilus as Model

Growing Up Queer

Many Years Ago 2:30am Sunday

All Male “Live” Nude Revue

Recently, I have acquired more images of The Forbidden City in my continual search for it both real and imagined, both in Beijing and also in my mind.

Enjoy…

Postcard of The Forbidden City, The Winter Palace, circa 1910-1920. The last Qing Emperor Pu Yi was expelled from this fantastical, magical place in 1924. He had been deposed in 1912 and languished in the city for 12 years.

Postcard of Tai-ho-men in The Forbidden City, circa 1920’s. Marked on the reverse Hartung’s Photo Shop Peking,

Postcard view of The Forbidden City, circa 1920’s.

The 21st Century Body, Mary Tyler Moore & Musical Desire: My New IPod Touch

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 01:05:00 +0000

So, I have had my IPod Touch now for about 2 weeks and it has been a big joy and a big shock to a 19th century fella such as myself, like finding out the world is indeed not flat (although now the world is flat again metaphorically, technologically)…especially to someone who was still playing vinyl and tapes from the ’80s 2 weeks ago…no joke…and walking around listening to my IPod, it’s like playing the soundtrack of my life, like I’m in a sitcom, like I’m Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat up into the air…my step is livelier with pep and vigor as I walk to the beat of New Order or Kylie or PSB or Ms. Stevie Nicks or The Gossip or The Smiths…it makes the trip more pleasant and transforms me into a cyborg and I cannot help but think that all this wonderful technology is, indeed, a source of great joy, yet simultaneously it also precipitates the continual effacement of the body and what is supposedly bringing us together is really isolating us from one another… I walk the street in my own musical world disconnected from others, I surf the net in Starbucks feeling like Lt. Uhura on her Enterprise pad device, but I am not part of a community…I am unconnected from all the other coffee drinkers there…but I still am quite fond of my new technological device…

Related posts about technology and the body:

Notes on the Internet: Reply To This Post

Notes on a Photograph: Untitled by Andrew Bush

Death/Grief/Absence/Presence: Felix and Felix

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 21:53:00 +0000

Aids is not only a medical crisis on an unparalleled scale, it involves a crisis of representation itself, a crisis over the entire framing knowledge about the human body and its capacities for sexual pleasure.- Simon Watney

The body is…directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out certain tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs.-Michel Foucault

In a blog post entitled, The Absent Body: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, AIDS, Homosexuality and Representation, I discussed a black and white photograph by the artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres called Untitled from 1991. The image depicts an empty bed consisting of 2 pillows, a sheet and rumpled top sheet. For Gonzalez-Torres, me and many others this image is a representation of AIDS that at first glance expressed simply and strongly mourning, loss and death. The image is a memorial to those who have died in the epidemic and indeed, the work was a personal memorial to Gonzalez-Torres’ lover, Ross Laycock, who died of AIDS in 1991.

But, this photograph is more than just an elegy to Ross and the many others who have died. By not actually depicting a body within the work, (it is merely indicated by the depressions in the 2 pillows) I argued that the Gonzalez-Torres photograph was in the words of art historian and critic Douglas Crimp not only an act of mourning, but also militancy. This simple, quiet image challenges, resists, subverts and exposes the paradigmatic representation of AIDS in the early days of the epidemic when homosexuality and AIDS was routinely and viciously conflated within culture. The dominant image of the disease at that time was a homosexual man, alone, gaunt, covered with Kaposi sarcoma lesions, a victim of his own perverted desires. A photograph of Donald Perlman from 1988 by Nicholas Nixon exemplifies this prevailing depiction. In contrast, the Gonzalez-Torres photograph, by refusing to represent the body or bodies with AIDS is a work of cultural activism which engaged and undermined the authoritative AIDS discourse operative at the moment of its production.

A photograph by AA Bronson entitled Felix, June 5. 1994 depicts another Felix dead on his bed. (This post has been updated. When it first appeared, I mistakenly thought the Felix of the Bronson piece was Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Thankfully a reader pointed out my mistake. This Felix is Felix Partz, a Canadian artist and member of the art collective General Idea as was Bronson and Jorge Zontal. General Idea pioneered conceptual and media-based art and were active from 1967-1994.)

General Idea, AIDS, Galerie Stampa, Frankfurt, 1988

Felix, June 5, 1994 appears in the current show at the National Portrait Gallery, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture; it is a troubling and fitting pendant to Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled of 1991. Both are memorials. Both are about death and loss. Both are about AIDS. And both are about resistance to the dominant fiction’s AIDS paradigm. But, while Untitled is lyrical and almost romantic in its pristine quality and simultaneously an image of revolution and militancy, the Bronson photograph is gruesome in its direct and unflinching portrait of death. But this photograph is not a depiction just any death, but death from AIDS and all the horror that having such a disease once entailed (and still does for some) before the advent of new drug therapies.

Bronson who was also Partz’s partner at the time photographed Felix a few hours after his death. The image is to a degree staged. As Bronson states, “He is arranged to receive visitors…” He is lying in bed wearing a pair of black and white bull’s-eye print pajamas which are too big for his wasted body. The oversized pajamas emphasize how much his physique has been withered and ravaged by AIDS. His face and hands, the only part of the corpse visible, are wizened and shriveled; the skin is tight and stretched over the bones underneath. His eyes are open in a dead stare. He looks at me. Apparently, his skin had shrunk so much from extreme wasting that his eye lids could not be closed. His mouth is parted showing his teeth as if he is taking a breath or about to speak. It is a horrific image.

He is surrounded by vibrant and vivid color- a yellow, blue, red and purple pillow, a multicolor sheet with an egg like pattern, a red and black plaid blanket and a grey, white and black striped blanket. The vibrancy of all of this color stands in marked contrast to the stillness of the devastated body of the artist, to its lifelessness. Death is not colorful; it is utter black.

Felix is surrounded by his favorite objects: the TV remote control, a tape recorder and cigarettes. This inclusion of cherished objects reminds me of an Egyptian tomb that is filled with items that the inhabitant of the tomb will need in the afterlife to survive and enjoy their new existence. These things around Felix make the viewer feel that he was just watching TV, he was just recording something, he was just having a smoke. One second you are alive and the next you are not.

When I first saw this photograph it terrified me and I could not really look at and return the artist’s gaze that had captured me in its dead stare. What struck me most, is how gruesome he looked- a skeleton covered with taut skin revealing the bones underneath. Where was the creative, handsome Felix Partz in this body?

As I viewed this image, I remembered seeing the other Felix, Felix Gonzalez-Torres years ago in the early 90’s speak at a conference on fantasy at the New School in New York City. I don’t quite remember what this Felix talked about, but I do remember his quiet, unassuming demeanor as he spoke, his dark hair and his good looks- a sweet face and an appealing body. He was smart and talented, producing works that were conceptual, lyrical, romantic even, but always pervaded by a sense of longing, loss and ending. He would die from AIDS in 1996 and if he was HIV+ then, I did not know it, but he did not look or act sick.

The contrast of the photograph of this Felix in my head and the the depiction of Felix Partz in the Bronson photograph was shocking and it made me cry. It was if I seeing Partz dead made me finally realize that the other Felix was really dead too. I mean I knew Gonzalez-Torres had died from AIDS in the mid 1990’s, but the Bronson image confronted me with the reality of that fact and it made me feel raw and emotional as if both Felixs had just died. At that moment I mourned their loss and rejected it at the same time, refusing to look too long at the terrifying image, refusing to accept the reality of their death from such a horrible disease. (Did Felix Gonzalez-Torres look like Felix Partz on his death bed?) But even at that moment I knew I had to write about this image and understand my relationship to it and why it affected me so greatly. I had to allow it to speak its truth to me.

Almost always when confronted with a photograph that grabs me deeply, I turn to the work of Roland Barthes in Camera Lucida to make sense of my feelings and reaction. While Barthes’ work on photography is theoretical, critical and intellectual it is also replete with emotion and is in the end profound. It allows me to intellectualize an image and then find out what about that image twists me in the pit of my stomach.

In Camera Lucida Barthes denotes 2 classifications for photographs- those image that belong to the studium and those images that belong to the punctum. The studium is the historical, social and cultural meaning of the photograph; it is denotation. The punctum on the other can be a small detail within the photograph that pierces the viewer, undermines the studium and takes the viewer to a place beyond language, beyond culture to the realm of the pre-Oedipal. It is connotation. Barthes further develops the punctum to be the essential meaning of photography- that-has-been. He states:

…every photograph is somehow co-natural with its referent…Photography’s Referent is not the same as the referent of other systems of representation…I call “photographic referent” not the optionally real thing to which an image or sign refers but the necessarily real thing which has been placed before a lens, without which there would be no photograph…in Photography I can never deny that the thing has been there. There is a superimposition here: of reality and of the past. And since this constraint exists only for Photography, we must consider it, by reduction, as the very essence, the noeme of Photography…the name of Photography’s noeme will therefore be: That-has-been…

The that-has-been is the profound meaning of photography that the viewer cannot escape or deny and that while simple and direct is a completely radical and unnerving revelation. I look at the Bronson photograph and I cannot deny the dead body of Felix Partz. The studium of the image is AIDS, the effects of this disease, the wasting etc., and also fashion- the bedding of a particular moment in the 90’s in a house of 2 gay men. It is a historical image that denotes the fate of many of those individuals who contracted HIV+ before there were effective drug therapies.

The punctum of the photograph on the other hand is the dead staring eyes of the artist. It is the detail of the image that as the viewer, I cannot escape. The patterns and the colors that surround him are all subordinated to his eyes and his lifeless gaze. Felix looks at me and you and fixes us in his gaze firmly, tightly as tight as his stretched skin. We are in the grip of Death. Indeed, the connotation of the photograph is death, the finality of life. The punctum of a photograph, Barthes says, pierces or cuts the viewer; here it eviscerates the spectator. I am dead; there is nothing else except photographs of me alive and now one of me dead- testaments to the that-has-been. And as viewers of this photograph, you and I are taken not so much to a beyond of the pre-Oedipal, but to a beyond of nothingness, of death from which there is no escape, no return, no angels, no trumpets, no white light.

I cried when I saw this photograph, not only for both Felixs, but for all the people I love in my life that will also die one day sooner or later and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

As Barthes eloquently states:

With the Photograph we enter into flat Death. One day, leaving one of my classes, someone said to me with disdain: “You talk about Death very flatly.” -As if the horror of Death were not precisely its platitude! The horror is this: nothing to say about the death of one whom I love most, (Here Barthes is speaking about his mother) nothing to say about her photograph, which I contemplate without ever being able to get to the heart of it, to transform it. The only “thought” I can have is that at the end of this first death, my own death is inscribed; between the two, nothing more than waiting; I have no other resource than this irony: to speak of “nothing to say.”

For Barthes, all photographs are a sign of death. The people in them so alive are in many cases already dead or will of course die eventually. Every photograph reminds us of our own mortality although we choose to ignore and deny it. The Bronson image of Felix Partz dead simply literalizes the inherent nature of the photograph which Barthes describes in contemplating the image of his own mother. While other photographs express death for Barthes, their subjects of people alive allow us at least to refuse to believe in their death and our own mortality. In contrast the Bronson photograph makes us look unflinchingly upon death; it does not allow us to deny that death comes one day for all of us.

Remembrance of Christmas Past

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 23:31:00 +0000

Thomas Nast, Merry Old Santa Claus, from the January 1, 1881 edition of Harper’s Weekly

When the summer ends and cooler weather starts to prevail and September begins my thoughts turn to Christmas. It becomes in part my focus and goal for the next four months. I think about ideas for gifts, what will be my wrapping paper/ribbon combination for that year, what holiday cards I will send to family and friends, how I will decorate my apartment and so on.

Wrapping paper number 1 for 2010. I love its illustration/graphic quality and the cast shadows. It reminds me of the 1950’s. I am using a matte gold double face satin ribbon with it.

Wrapping paper number 2 for 2010. I love this ersatz Burberry plaid paper and how it complements the poinsettia paper. I am using the same mate gold ribbon with this paper as well.

The card for 2010 featuring a polar bear sculpture by François Pompon 1922. I should be a polar bear, but it’s impossible…

Tablescape in the dining room- vintage silver foil tree with gold glass ornaments and a selection of silver from my collection, fresh flowers and sherry ready for guests.

Wreath hanging from my massive bookcase with vintage green and gold glass ornaments, silver glitter birds and silver ribbon edged in gold.

Arrangement of faux creamy white roses, incense cedar, hanging cedar, long needle pine and weeping pine. For more beautiful permanent custom floral designs see HERE.

And when Christmas comes, I quite enjoy celebrating the day with family and friends and putting all my plans into effect. But, often in addition to the joy, there is a sense of wistful nostalgia or slight regret about Christmas past when I was a child and how the traditions then changed or ended as I grew up, as people died or faded away, as tastes changed, as time marched relentlessly on into the future. Am I really 43? Only yesterday I was 20.

Christmas Past

When my family moved to New Jersey in 1975, a new Christmas tradition began in a new house. My great aunt Margaret (my grandmother’s sister) and her husband Edward whom I always weirdly referred to (as my mom did in her childhood) as simply “Aunt” and “Uncle” (in part because both of my parents are only children as I am and so in a sense they were really the only Aunt and Uncle on that side of the family.)

Aunt and Uncle would come to our house on Christmas Eve and stay through the holiday. With them we opened presents on Christmas Eve in the tradition of the German side of the family of whom Aunt was the only surviving member. Her elder sister, my grandmother Hedwig, Grammy, died when I was 11 months old, so I never knew her nor do I remember her. (That is a regret.) On Christmas Eve in the New Jersey house, everyone selected a favorite food of the appetizer variety like shrimp or clams or pâté and we all sat and ate by the tree and the fireplace in the living room. It was lovely.

I remember the year when my mom and I made yards and yards of popcorn and cranberry garlands.

I remember the year when I got the first Star Wars figures made- Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, R2D2 and my ultimate favorite, Darth Vader. You didn’t get the actual figures, but a certificate that guaranteed you receiving those 5 characters when they were made in the following year.

I remember the Christmas Eve when I did not get the Wonder Woman doll, but I survived…

I remember going out to dinner with my parents and Aunt (Uncle was no longer with us) on Christmas Eve and there was a dapper, older gentleman eating alone. Before we left my mother went over to him and said, “Merry Christmas!” and shook his hand. That act encapsulates what she is all about and I will always remember her gesture of kindness and love.

Aunt and Uncle always gave me books, many of them about history. I still have these books on subjects like The Great War and World War II and they fostered my interest in my German heritage despite the horrors of the 2 wars which was that heritage’s historical context.

Aunt and Uncle circa 1950? Aunt is all personality- full of piss and vinegar and Uncle is rockin’ the knee highs with shorts look.

Aunt and Uncle were an interesting couple. No children, married quite young. Uncle was a saint really- a very devout Catholic (Aunt always said he loved his religion), but he was Catholic in the best sense of Christ’s teachings and not dogmatic or political.

Aunt, on the other hand, was high maintenance. A character really. Here is a picture of her in the 1930’s where one can see and feel her vibrant, jaunty and glamorous personality. She was fun.

In contrast, a picture of my grandmother Hedwig in her thirties exemplifies her serious, exacting personality- the eldest child of a German upper bourgeoisie family.

But although Aunt was fun, it was hard to know her in an emotional/intimate sense. She always wore an intriguing ring, her engagement ring- a flat rectangular stone of unfaceted black onyx set in gold. I always thought that this ring captured who she was- independent (n0 traditional diamond for her), tasteful, chic, smooth, impenetrable- her emotions hidden beneath the shiny black opaque surface that did not and perhaps could not reflect anything truly personal.

Update: In speaking with my mother after publishing this post, I learned that Aunt’s onyx engagement ring was also chosen by her because of potential gender discrimination at her job. Aunt and Uncle were married in 1930 and Aunt had to still work and apparently married women were frowned upon because it was thought they would leave to have a baby. So, Aunt’s ring in its length served to cover up her thin gold wedding band and impart the impression that she was a single, carefree gal in the workforce. Fascinating. But, I also still think that she liked being different and having an unusual engagement tickled her distinctive personality.

Aunt still jaunty at 73 in 1985- great vest and cap look.

It was a shame really because I wanted to know all about her side of the family and their life in Germany. Whatever she knew, she did not really tell and now never will, but instead she let out small bon mots about life in Germany as a child or about the Bier family. (She and the entire family- mother, father, her elder sister and brother emigrated to the United States in 1922.) Her favorite line, “All I remember is the Kaiser (Wilhelm II); his picture hung in my classroom at school” , but nothing else really about the family I so desperately wanted to learn about in contrast to the other half of my family: my mother’s father’s side who were all Irish, all Catholic, all quite close minded. To them I was too different, too intellectual, too much a thinker, too queer. I thought the German side of my family would indeed “get” me- my critical consciousness, my refined taste, my bouts of melancholia, depression and doubt.

The Biers were from Dessau in the east of Germany. They were solidly and probably proudly upper middle class with an ease of living. But as with all families there were secrets. My great grandmother Johanna who was called Oma (colloquial term for grandma) by my mother, married Arthur Bier. Oma had a Jewish mother named Rosa Solomon pictured right in a stickpin my great grandmother wore. My mother did not learn about this fact until her 20’s because my grandmother and Aunt thought it would upset her. Surprise, she wasn’t upset.

And Arthur Bier whom we refer to as Opa even though he died before my mother was born was the black sheep of the family. He moved to New York City around the turn of the century and married Johanna here and then returned to Germany where they lived apparently quite comfortably below the castle in Braunfels near Frankfurt-am-Main. Why they didn’t return to Dessau in the east, I don’t know. Perhaps his marriage to a partly Jewish woman prevented that.

When they emigrated back to the United States in the early 1920’s, Arthur worked as a janitor- a fact that embarrassed Aunt even when I knew her. I don’t think we even have a photograph of him. He died on Pearl Harbor Day 1941; he was only 58. The details are fuzzy, a mystery lost to time and there is no one left to ask.

At Christmas, I often think of the Biers and wonder and fantasize and try to imagine them and their life in Germany before and during The Great War and what came after. Did they have real candles on their Christmas tree? What were the ornaments like? How did they wrap presents? What did they give one another? What were their traditions? Who was Arthur Bier?

There does exist a picture of the Biers which I now cannot find, but it has always stuck in mind. The setting is spring or summer and the family is arrayed outside in the bright sun, some seated, some standing. Whom they all are I don’t know, but the patriarch stands out still in my head. He is seated and wearing a light colored suit with a straw boater hat and perhaps he holds an elegant cane. He and his family surrounding him all look self-confident, almost smug in their display of their haute bourgeoisie status in the relatively new German Empire founded in 1871. They are proud Germans, recording themselves around the time of the war, just before or just after, but before the (un)representable horrors to come.

Christmas Present

For the last 12 years or so, my parents and I have been celebrating Christmas with our adopted family- my father’s goddaughter, her husband and their 3 children, the oldest of whom, a girl, will be 12 in January 2011. The youngest, also a girl, 18 months is my goddaughter and she is the great joy of my life. I am her Mary Poppins 1/2 the week and though arduous, it is a great adventure watching her growing up and learn and wonder. Her new favorite word is “No”.

Christmas, I think, is always more sweet with children present, especially if they still believe in Santa. Their excitement about gifts, decorations and Christmas cookies is infectious and reminds one of one’s own childhood when all things (at times) seemed possible. Their unjaded participation in the festivities is a great thing to share as I do with the 3 W____ children. It is like inhabiting a Thomas Nast (1940-1902) Christmas engraving, many of which appeared in Harper’s Weekly- sweet, innocent and make believe. These images are the way we all want Christmas to be, but often it is not in reality because one grows up, one experiences loss and disappointment and no one expects a jolly man in a red suit to once again come the chimney bearing wondrous gifts.

When my mother was a child, she would like many children leave Santa a snack, but also with great originality a cigar. This of course was at a time when smoking was still considered healthy and I guess Santa needed a nicotine break on his long night of flying through the sky delivering presents. The next morning the snack was gone and the cigar was half-smoked with its ashes on the plate thanks to Uncle. It is a fond memory for her; it makes me smile and demonstrates what a sweet man Uncle was and how small memories can last a lifetime.

My mom age 6 and Santa in 1948.

The snack and the cigar for Santa were left in a house devoid of any decoration or ornament. But, when my mother woke up Christmas morning the house was a holiday wonderland seemingly created by Santa himself. My grandparents and Aunt and Uncle stayed up late into the night transforming the house for my mother and her belief in Santa Claus. How lucky that was for her and them.

This tradition of course ended with my mother’s childhood as so much invariably does as we grow older. Now, my mother and I decorate her house over several weeks as we simultaneously decorate client’s homes for her successful custom floral design business, Jo’s Blooms in Short Hills, New Jersey. At my parent’s house, we laden the tree with hundreds of ornaments, many of them vintage pieces from Aunt and my grandmother, trim the mantle and staircase with garlands and ribbon and set the table for the coming holiday meal.

Even the kitchen is transformed for Christmas. Here is a picture of my mother’s kitchen hutch filled with a collection of Spode Pink Tower transferware circa 1900-1920 ( a collection that nicely began with my grandmother) interspersed with vintage holiday items: bottle brush trees laden with snow, elves and snowmen (some smoking cigarettes!) made with pinecone bodies, decorated cardboard houses with snowy roofs and a vintage plastic Santa in a sleigh pulled by celluloid reindeer. These holiday ornaments are now over 50 years old. They have survived and endured many a Christmas and are now slightly faded or a bit broken and so on. But no matter. In the end that is what we all do- survive and endure and hopefully enjoy Christmas or whatever holiday we celebrate with family and friends.

And when Christmas is over, I often have a slight dip in my overall mood. All that preparation and anticipation for one day and then it’s over too quickly and a new year begins. Putting away everything from the holiday is certainly not as fun as decorating and unpacking it. But there is always next Christmas and the memories made this year will carry me through to next September when my mind turns toward the holiday again.

Happy Christmas! Happy New Year!

The Bier children in Germany- Aunt with the impish grin, serious Hedwig the eldest and Hans the next generation’s black sheep.

My mother as a baby, my great grandmother Johanna, “Oma” and my grandmother Hedwig, “Grammy”.

Silver Desire: An Aesthetic Sugar and Creamer by Rogers Smith and Company

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:56:00 +0000

At the Pier Antique Show in November I was reintroduced to a wonderful antique dealer, Sarah Eigen, who deals in 19th century decorative arts especially aesthetic pieces in pottery, silverplate and brass. In the past I had bought from her a swell black transferware plate in the Sado pattern circa 1879-1881 which features a border design of Asian children playing a board game, along with butterflies and peonies. I also purchased from Sarah a pair of silverplate sugar tongs in an early Aesthetic pattern called Brilliant that was introduced by Reed and Barton in 1869.

When I bought the Sado plate, Sarah kindly invited me to her apartment to see her Aesthetic transferware and silverplate collection which was vast and superb. I learned so much that afternoon and it is always lovely to spend time with someone who shares your collecting passion.

At the Pier Show, I added to my Aesthetic silverplate collection and acquired from Sarah a gorgeous creamer and lidded sugar in very clean condition by one of the ubiquitous Rogers manufacturers- Rogers Smith & Company. The pair probably date to circa 1877-1880 or so. I learned from Sarah that the applied circular foot was indicative of that 1870 period rather than a piece of holloware on feet which is more in keeping with the style of the 1880’s. Also, the clear influence of Japanese art on the pair suggests a date after the US Centennial Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia where a lavish Japanese pavilion featured the arts of Japan and fostered “The Japan Craze” which spread throughout the United States and influenced silver styles especially in plate.

Both the creamer and lidded sugar feature incised decoration indicative of the Aesthetic period in its love of nature and the influence of Japanese art, particularly its metalwork which often depicted flora and fauna. On each side of the sugar and creamer, there is a flock of 3 birds, a spray of leaves which may be fern fronds or laurel leaves and a stylized pine tree with lovely and intricate detailing to the bark. The elements are asymmetrical in their layout which is also a characteristic of Japanese art and the Aesthetic style.

Below the pine tree is a stylized decorative geometric band that could also be understood as a garden wall from behind which the stylized pine tree emerges. The flock of 3 birds appear to be flying to alight on this tree. This band is reminiscent of the borders found in English Aesthetic transferware which was a strong influence on American Aesthetic silverplate design. Here are 3 examples of English Aesthetic transferware pottery in my collection whose geometric border designs are similar in feel and appearance to the Rogers Smith sugar and creamer although slightly later in date. These border patterns on the transferware and the band on the sugar and creamer may also have been influenced by Japanese textile designs of the period, yet the transferware seems to be the paramount influence.

Platter in the Kew pattern by Copeland circa 1884

Plate in the Faisan pattern by Minton circa 1881

Plate in the Chinese Vase pattern by Blair & Co. circa 1884

The handles on the sugar and creamer have an carved look as if the handle was cast and then metal was cut away to reveal and create flowers, leaves and vines in relief. The flowers seem similar to dogwood and against a stippled ground- a feature reminiscent of Japanese metalwork although the top of the handle features an acanthus leaf which is a classical motif.

Coffee spoon (handle end) in the Gorham Japanese pattern also with a stippled ground found in Japanese metalwork. The pattern was introduced in 1870.

The decorative band around the top of the pair also features leaves interspersed with what resemble stylized flowers and indeed they are meant to be petals or leaves based on honeysuckle or palm leaves. This motif is called an anthemion and was used commonly in classical art and architecture. This ornamentation relates to the acanthus leaf at the top of the sugar and creamer handles.

A selection of anthemia

Obviously, this decorative die-rolled band of anthemia on the sugar and creamer are in contrast to the main Aesthetic elements of the pair. (Die-rolled- a sheet of metal which has been passed through patterned steel rollers. ) It makes me think that perhaps that the form of this sugar and creamer was an older model that had an overall classical design that this decorative strip would have originally complemented. When fashions changed and “The Japanese Craze” began, the company redesigned the main decoration of the sugar and creamer, but left other elements such as the die-rolled band of anthemia in the design perhaps to save costs. It is an intriguing thought and speaks to the nature of silverplate in which the dies (the forms that made the shapes and some decorative elements like die-rolled bands) are valuable and were not just discarded when styles changed. These dies were used over and over again and even sold between different companies so that similar forms often appear from different makers.

The holloware division of Rogers Smith began in 1862, so it is possible that this sugar and creamer represents an older form. Another silverplate maker, Meriden Britannia, bought this holloware division in 1863. And the mark on the pair is after 1865 when the division was moved to Meriden (and of course obviously later by its Aesthetic style as well.) So, it is possible that this Rogers Smith creamer and lidded sugar is a former model with a new Aesthetic design. A footnote perhaps but fascinating to me as a collector.

Or the mishmash of styles, motifs etc. may just be an example of Victorian eclecticism and art historical interest. For example, the finial of the sugar lid looks like a stylized lotus blossom which would be an example of the Egyptian Revival. (The Egyptian Revival is usually dated from 1820-1850, but silver examples with Egyptian motifs appear long after that date into the 1880’s. And of course, there was another great Egyptian revival after 1922 when King Tut’s tomb was found by Harry Carter.) So, yet another style enters the mix, though I would argue that the design as a whole works together despite the stylistic dissonance.

Egyptian Revival silverplate water pitcher by B. A. Clark & Co. Boston, circa 1860

I am looking forward to using this sugar and creamer at my next silver dessert soirée along with my other Aesthetic china, holloware as well as flatware and amuse my guests with the word anthemion.

31 Seconds of Anger, Terror, Shock and Ambivalence: It’s Never Just HIV

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:40:00 +0000

“Aids is not only a medical crisis on an unparalleled scale, it involves a crisis of representation itself, a crisis over the entire framing knowledge about the human body and its capacities for sexual pleasure.”- Simon Watney

NYC Department of Health PSA: It's Never Just HIV

The New York City Department of Health created the PSA It’s Never Just HIV which began airing on television about one week ago. The department’s website states that in New York City the AIDS rate is 3 times the US average and that HIV is the third leading cause of death for NYC residents aged 35-54. These are sobering statistics which when coupled with the evidence that many gay men under 30 are contracting HIV at a greater rate than their older peers believing perhaps that with the new drug therapies the disease has become merely a chronic condition. Or perhaps they feel that a cure is just around the corner. Either way the context of the disease now is vastly different from the early days of the epidemic when contracting HIV more likely meant suffering and death.

Against these facts, I assume, the Department of Health felt the need for a very strong PSA to urge people to practice safe sex, use condoms and realize that HIV even when treated with medications can cause many other health problems. Yet, the form of this PSA which only features men of various ethnicities and seems clearly targeted to gay men alone is a shocking display of terror and fear. It attempts to scare the viewer into safer sexual behavior by graphically relating the potential complications of HIV. It states that dozens of diseases can occur with HIV and no matter if you are on a drug therapy. It focuses on three that you could contract: osteoporosis, dementia and anal cancer.

In the osteoporosis section of the PSA there is a split second image of men dancing; you only see their legs while the voice over describes the disease as a dissolution of bone accompanied by an x-ray image of bone full of holes and then another x-ray of a leg in which the thigh bone cracks and brakes. The brief dancing segment seems to reference gay nightlife and suggests rather ignorantly that such nightlife always leads to unprotected sex and HIV infection.

The dementia portion of the ad depicts a man holding his head and looking confused and then the image of his head dissolves into a cat scan of apparently his brain that suddenly atrophies and looks shredded.

The final section about the contraction of anal cancer is the most graphic and gruesome. A cat scan reveals tumors in the anus. And then a split second image of a diseased, reddened anus with hideous black stitches appears. This sequence reminded me of Leo Bersani’s famous article, “Is the Rectum a Grave"?” Clearly in the PSA the rectum (of gay men) is a place of disease and pain rather than pleasure and sexual gratification.

And here is why I am angry. This PSA seems to revive old representations which appeared in the early years of the AIDS crisis in which gay men were conflated completely with the disease. To be gay was to be a contagious threat to the rest of the population. This paradigmatic representation changed as the nature of AIDS itself shifted with effective drug therapies that allowed people to live longer and healthier lives. But this ad shows gay men seemingly healthy but when their insides are revealed through technology only disease is present.

And while I am angry at this PSA for its terror tactics and its casting of gay men as some sort of new millennium monsters, I am also ambivalent because I realize that there exists a degree of complacency about HIV as if it is simply a chronic and manageable condition. Of course, it contributes to other health problems, but shock and awe scare tactics do not seem to be the way to reach gay men about changing their sexual behavior. The content is important, but its form is dangerous.

A recent study in The Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes found that gay men newly infected with HIV change their sexual behavior only in the short term, only to resort to previous unsafe practices in the long run. In this context (whether this study is accurate or merely anecdotal) it doesn’t seem that the new PSA can truly be effective for its target audience. Instead what it does rather insidiously, is confirm for the wider heterosexual world that gay men are vessels of disease with the founding disease being HIV.

The PSA ends with an image of a man in a hospital bed visited by his lover or husband or friend as if this is the fate of all gay men whether HIV+ or not…same-sex desire equals death.

The Antique Flâneur: A Pair of Carlton Ware Armand Lustre Vases

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:20:00 +0000

Recently, I have been working with a wonderful designer in Madison, New Jersey who loves to use antiques in designing her clients' homes. She asked The Antique Flâneur to find a pair of vases for a client's living room mantle. The pair had to be substantial in size, complement the rooms color scheme of pale blue and rusty red and have a slight Asian feel. With this brief, I found a gorgeous pair of ginger jars by the English manufacturer Carlton Ware dating to circa 1915-1920 in Tennessee of all places.

The vases feature a complementary, yet different design of hand-painted cockerels or roosters in underglaze enamels of rusty reds and navy amongst rusty red peonies set against a pale, mottled lustre blue ground. The entire motif is superbly highlighted with an overglaze metallic gold which was probably applied using a transferware process. This color scheme was a perfect match to the drapery treatments of the room. The vases on the mantle brought all the wonderful color of the drapes to the focal point of the room.

The cockerels and the peonies reminiscent of motifs in Japanese art impart the slightly Asian feel that the designer wanted to highlight in the room. This Asian feel is further enhanced by the finials of the ginger jars which are gilded foo dogs. In Asian culture, foo dogs serve as guardians against evil spirits at the entrances of homes and temples. They are a subtle and sophisticated addition to the vases. The cockerel motif, color scheme and foo dog finials firmly place this pair of Carlton Ware vases in the long tradition of European decorative arts that have been influenced by the arts of China and Japan.

Carlton Ware was founded in 1890 and based in Stoke-on-Trent, England; The Carlton Ware trademark was introduced in 1894. The pair of cockerel vases I recently found were sold under Carlton Ware's separate high-end Armand line which began production circa 1915-1920. The vases are a true high fired lustreware with a pottery body more like china than heavy earthenware and were expensive at the time of their production. The back stamp shows 2 fish in water encircled by the name of the line.

In the 1920's Carlton Ware introduced a new mode of production which combined decals applied to high glaze bodies with some hand-painting and gilt transfer. This process was in a sense a cheaper version of the expensive Armand line which did not use decals and was all hand-painted. This new process featured Asian inspired patterns such as New Mikado and Chinoiserie as well as a range of Tutankhamen inspired ware. The tomb of the pharaoh was discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter; the objects found in the tomb inspired many branches of the decorative arts. There was also a pattern called Persian that was inspired by the arts of the Near East. Here is a later New Mikado vase dated circa 1950:

Here is a selection of Tutankhamen pieces:

Contact me at info@theantiqueflaneur.com if you would like me to find you a gorgeous Carlton Ware item! And if you are looking for a wonderful interior designer in the Madison, New Jersey area, please contact me for a referral.

Notes on Art: Jesus Loves Me Part II or The Wandering, Lonely and Restless Soul of Marsden Hartley

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 03:02:00 +0000

“…I have never been near the real thing before, for a fisherman is more of a ‘thing’ then a shut-in farmer…”-Marsden Hartley in a 1935 letter from Nova Scotia

“I wasn’t unmindful of the look in your face that day that comes over one in the moments of crucifixion. Only the other day I said to the dear….girls here in the house- and it seemed as if I must shriek it- ‘I want to get down off the cross.’ I make no…comparisons in using the symbol of the cross- I only felt I wanted to get down from something, to have the steel points removed from my flesh.” -Marsden Hartley in an undated letter.

“It’s wild and tense(?) up here- noble in spirit and devastating human endurance from the stories of the sea they tell me so simply as anyone would tell of a bus ride. They recount the dangers and the savagery of the sea and there are no ‘dude’ fisherman up this way- they are the real thing…”- Marsden Hartley in a 1935 letter from Nova Scotia

Christ Held by Half-Naked Men, 1940-41, oil on fiberboard, Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Gardens, Washington, DC.

In my last post I discussed in part the masochistic act of Jesus Christ in his crucifixion as being at its core (beyond the religion that emerged from this act) as a negation of traditional masculinity. I further suggested that an image of the crucifixion in its display of a nearly nude and muscular male body is a site of homoerotic desire seen through a dynamic of suffering, sacrifice and humiliation.

This underlying homoeroticism is made starkly and passionately visible in Marsden Hartley’s late work, Christ Held by Half-Naked Men. In this painting, the artist has created a homoerotic Pièta, the moment after crucifixion when the dead body of Christ is taken down from the instrument of his death and in traditional works of this subject held by his mother, The Virgin Mary. In the Hartley image, the Virgin is absent as is all female presence; she is replaced by a muscular shirtless fisherman in blue jeans and a traditional Nova Scotia fisherman’s hat who tenderly cradles on his lap the lifeless Christ, a fact emphasized by the greenish, whitish, bluish skin of the dead, decaying body which vividly contrasts with the smooth, pink and robust skin of the fisherman.

Behind the central pair stands 7 other similarly attired, but also shirtless buff men with bright pink smooth skin. These figures become a new type of angels mourning the dead Christ. Yet, these men are not wholly pious; they adopt the stance of one cruising at a bar- one hand at the waistband, the other emphasizing the groin. They are posing and displaying their body for the spectator and like Christ’s solace, they proudly display their large almost grotesque pectoral muscles with giant nipples and prominent belly buttons like wide staring eyes that fixate the viewer and implicate him in the homoerotic scene. Indeed, there real eyes seem closed in pray?

The belly buttons and nipples in their representation also mimic the nail holes in Christ’s hands and feet, the wounds of the crucifixion as if the fisherman all received symbolic stigmata for their love of Christ. The painting conflates and contrasts his suffering with sexual spectacle and desire- the desire for built Nova Scotia fisherman.

In traditional Christian iconography the image of Christ held by the Virgin Mary is symbolic of Christ as a sacrifice, as the lamb, as the host of the mass, as the bread of the Last Supper placed on the altar of the Church personified and embodied by his mother Mary. It is decidedly a heterosexual union. In Hartley’s painting the body of Christ is instead displayed and sacrificed on the altar of conventional masculinity signified by the shirtless fisherman- a masculine archetype that the artist favored both in his art and his life. In a 1933 letter from Germany, Hartley writes, “…I am always in a state of little boy admiration of the strong men type for what he is able to do with his body.” The smaller stature of Jesus in Hartley’s painting suggests a child despite his beard and pecs in relation to the larger men who surround him. Indeed, in a traditional Pièta, Christ is a child held by his mother The Virgin Mary.

I have always found this painting incredibly moving; it is poignant, erotic and tender in its conflation of (homo)desire, death and religion underlined by the rawness of its form- the visceral brushstroke and the striking contrast of blue and pink. It is not surprising that this work was made at the end of Hartley’s life. He died in 1943. Knowing this fact has always brought tears to my eyes when I look at this image. It is underlined by the numerous letters of Hartley’s which I read while researching my master’s thesis in art history. In his own words, I encountered a creative and lonely man who on some level remained an outsider his entire life (a self much like me). He was a restless, searching soul who perhaps never found peace and that truth is with me when I look at any of his paintings and not just this one.

In the end, Christ Held by Half-Naked Men is really a self-portrait. Hartley is himself the Christ in this work, finally able to get down off the cross of life, of loneliness, of homophobia, and be lovingly yet full of desire held by another man and hopefully find a degree of solace, the steel points finally removed from his flesh.

Notes on Art, Memory and Religion: Jesus Loves Me

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 01:15:00 +0000

Another Christ is on the cross/ The nails are words, the nails are lies/ To make it crawl and make it scream/ And make it real and make it bleed/ And make it bleed and make it bleed/ And make it bleed and make it dream/ Imitation of Christ/ Imitation of Christ

-Imitation of Christ by The Psychedelic Furs, 1980

In the spring of 1974 in the blond wood paneled basement of my parent’s attached brick house in Flatbush, Brooklyn, I, a young Roman Catholic queer boy, attempted to reenact the resurrection of Jesus Christ with a small model tomb fashioned out of what I don’t remember and homemade vanilla wafers to serve as the host of the Mass and the bread of the Last Supper. Surprisingly, none of the other kids on my block were keen on the idea, but I was fascinated with Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection especially since that was also the year of my First Communion.

At that time, I had become obsessed with a book of saints which presented ersatz High Renaissance pictures of saints and martyrs along with the narrative of their grisly demise at the hands of non-believers. I was especially riveted by those saints who bore the wounds of Christ as a testament of their devotion. In my young queer mind, I longed for this miracle as proof of my own belief, but also as proof that God really did exist. (Even today, I long for miracles.)

The images in my book of saints more than the text kept me fixated which is no surprise because if nothing else Roman Catholicism is a pictorial religion, almost cinematic really in its spectacular display of torture, death and resurrection. The pictures in my book were like the images on the walls of the dark church in Brooklyn that I attended. These paintings were the last gasp of the High Renaissance ideals of Raphael in their seamless and easy style.

As I grew older, I moved from the ersatz to the authentic and began seeing religious paintings by accomplished artists from periods where religion was a central component of everyday life, of everyone’s weltanschauung. These works of art were more resonant than the pale imitators in that Brooklyn church and even their antecedent, the work of Raphael which became as I earned my art history degree in college, more tame, too perfect, too easy, Works by Raphael and his contemporaries no longer appealed to me in their perfect idealism.

Diego Velasquez, Christ Crucified, c.1632, oil on canvas, 67”x98”, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

In contrast, a work such as Christ Crucified by Velasquez is not easily digestible. It is visceral in its depiction of the taut, muscular, smooth and dying body of Christ and the draining and dripping blood from his wounds. This painting is not a shrill drama; there is a serenity here despite the painful death on display, a peacefulness heightened by the isolation of the figure against a stark black background. Nothing distracts us from the simple emotion of the act of Christ’s masochistic sacrifice. It is like a vision that materializes before the devoted viewer who is deep in prayer. For me, a Raphael simply does not possess this kind of profound emotion.

As works like the Velasquez stimulated me emotionally and intellectually I had become by that time at 17 or 18 angry and alienated from the Catholic Church because of its misogynistic and homophobic dogma and teachings. But while I stopped attending church and believing, religious works of art became in a sense my new religion- objects of faith and devotion. A work such as the Velasquez ( and even the work of Raphael and maybe even those illustrations in that dark Brooklyn church) have for years and centuries been objects of worship and faith. They are animated and inscribed with the religious emotion of all those people who have seen and felt them. They are invested with power; Christ Crucified by Velasquez emanates not only an artistic, creative energy, but the spirit of all who have ever viewed it, contemplated it and been touched by it. It resonates with a faith and desire whether you believe in God or not and one cannot deny its power when you stand before it.

Indeed, the key word here is “desire”, not only in a religious sense, a desire to be one with Christ, but also a sexual one in the spectacular display of Christ’s nearly naked body. This body in its youth and lithe muscularity appealed to my young queer self (and many others I am sure) twisted through the lens of masochism. Appealing not only visually as a desirable body, but also as an act of sacrifice, the crucifixion is ultimately a negation of traditional masculinity despite the formation from it of a patriarchal, misogynistic and homophobic Roman Catholic Church. Christ has always been more radical than the religion(s) that were constructed around his teachings.

Edouard Manet, The Dead Christ with Angels, 1864, oil on canvas, 70”x59”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Christ’s acceptance of death whether you believe he was divine or not is indeed a profound and radical act. God dies. He is not omnipotent, wrathful, vengeful, unapproachable or hierarchical like other gods. He is a frail human being. I am often reminded of this truth when looking at Manet’s The Dead Christ with Angels which I always contemplate when I go to the Met. In this painting, the reality of Christ’s physical death is unavoidable- the bloodless pallor of the skin,, the dead stare of the open eyes, one more open than the other, and the dried wounds of the crucifixion. The scant halo around the figure’s head seems like an afterthought, overshadowed by the visceral corporeality of the dead body. There seems to be no hope of resurrection or divinity.

The pair of angels in the work also seem out of place or at least they are not the typical angels of for example a High Renaissance painting. They are not idealized, but are facially distinct. Their wings appear ornithologically accurate as if to underline the reality of the dead body displayed. Or it suggests that they are costumed models with attached wings in an art studio scenario. The entire painting is a mockup, a fiction. It is a painting about religious painting, rather than a religious painting.

Moreover, the wound on Christ’s torso is located on the wrong side. Manet knew of this error, but did not change it as if to call into question the resurrection narrative of the painting: God is just dead, not divine and incapable of resurrection. Religion and representation are in question. As Nietzsche said, “God is dead, “ killed by the modernity that Manet sought to represent both in form and content in his paintings of Second Empire Paris and after.

Paul Gauguin, The Yellow Christ, 1889, oil on canvas, 36”x29”, The Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo.

In contrast to the 1864 Manet, God is certainly not dead in Gauguin’s The Yellow Christ, but mythology and ideology (as in all works of art) are still operating in this striking painting of Post-Impressionism. Three kneeling women in traditional Breton costume are on one level having a vision of the crucified Christ as they engage in prayer and contemplation. The brilliant color of the image- the vivid yellow of Christ’s body, the orange of the trees set off against the blues and whites of the female figures contributes to this sense of vision and the otherworldly.

On another level, Gauguin is looking to the countryside, in this case Pont-Aven, Brittany as a way to escape the modern city with all of its pleasures, but also problems. Tourism is a decidedly late 19th century phenomenon when with the advent of the railroad one could leave the city for a fictitious, bucolic countryside supposedly unaffected by industrialization and the rise of consumer culture. But this understanding is of course a myth of capitalism and the other.

There is evidence to suggest that the Bretons revived the wearing of their traditional costume as a way to make Brittany a more popular tourist destination. It added local color. The Bretons were selling the picturesque and the quaint. In this regard, both tourist/viewer and native participated knowingly and unknowingly in constructing the binaries of tourist/other, inside/outside, modern/rustic, city/country, masculine/feminine and so on. In The Yellow Christ Gauguin is presenting the viewer as tourist what they want to see: the simple religious devotion of the Breton peasant. This sense of religious feeling is heightened by the painting’s form- the areas of bright color and the overall flatness of the image. In the end, Pont-Aven was not far enough away from Paris, from modernity for Gauguin, so he travelled to Tahiti to find another Other, to find paradise, where he enthusiastically spread syphilis to the native population.

My devotion to religious painting continues to this day whether it is the visceral calm and emotional piety of the Velasquez, the paradigm shattering of the Manet or the myth building of the Gauguin. Each of these works of art to varying degrees are inscribed with the power of the faithful. They are embedded with devotion. As with all things that arouse my desire, when I stand or have stood before these paintings I experience a moment of bliss.

The Psychedelic Furs Imitation of Christ

Silver Desire: The Spooner

noreply@blogger.com (Kelly T Keating) — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 00:18:00 +0000

Silverplate spooner by Pairpoint Manufacturing Company, Bedford, Massachusetts, after 188o.

Another archaic 19th century tabletop item in silver that I love to collect is known as a spooner. It was considered an essential serving item used to hold and display teaspoons most often as part of a standard tea set of teapot, creamer, sugar bowl and waste bowl. The spooner emerged in the Victorian era after 1850 and was made in a variety of materials, metal, porcelain and glass. They went out of fashion by the 1930’s.

The display of one’s teaspoons in a spooner indicated a ready and visible hospitality for potential guests and was also a mark of status for the emerging middle class who for a variety of economic and cultural factors could by the late 19th century afford silver or at the very least its facsimile. In this new consumer era, the middle class wanted to demonstrate its social standing and its sense of fashion.

The spooner is further a good example of how consumer capitalism develops ever more products that we are supposed to want, to need in order to have a successful and happy life. By introducing the spooner as a must-have, silver manufacturers had yet another item to sell to consumers that not only had a specialized function, but was also meant to convey the distinction and class of its owner, just as the proliferation of use specific flatware exploded during this period as well. There was not just one fork for the dining table. To be fashionable, to have status, one had to have a dinner fork, a fish fork, a strawberry fork, an oyster fork, a pastry fork and so on into madness. This proliferation was not only of course a way to sell more products, but a way to psychologically sell an aura of refinement, breeding and taste, further suggests the need of 19th century culture to classify, to divide, to specialize and to ultimately subjugate materially and conceptually the entire world.

My Silver Spooners

Silverplate spooner by Rogers Smith & Company, Meriden, Connecticut, c. 1877-1887.

I presently have 5 spooners in my silver collection. Four are Victorian silverplate and one is made of sterling from 1915. Of the four 19th century pieces, 2 have the two handled vase-shape. This particular form is a distinctly American invention and not found elsewhere. It was most prominent in the 1850’s and 1860’s. By the 1870’s spooners were considered an essential part of a complete tea service.

The Rogers Smith & Company spooner features a vase shape with a dimpled textured background with stylized flowers and can be considered aesthetic in style. Seemingly applied in low relief on this Japanese metalwork inspired background is a fish, coral branches, a shell, a crab and a dragonfly. The applying of naturalistic creatures to a piece of metalwork indicates the influence of Japanese art. There are higher end aesthetic pieces in sterling by such firms as Gorham and Whiting that use this technique of applying creatures in relief to a holloware or flatware form as well. Often these animals are fashioned in another metal such as copper. The Rogers spooner is a more mass market derivative of such pieces as the creatures are not applied, but part of the original die of the piece.

Like the Rogers Smith & Company, this Pairpoint spooner also has the typical vase shape with 2 handles on 4 elaborate feet. Since Pairpoint was founded in 1880, the piece was made sometime after that date. I suspect it was made sometime during that decade because of the fan motif of the handles which mildly suggests the Japanese inspired aesthetic style.

The vase form and its banded decoration of what I think are laurel leaves with berries, however, is decidedly unaesthetic in style and seems at odds with the handles of the spooner. When dealing with silverplate, it is always important to remember that the dies used to produce plate items are quite valuable and are often used over a long period of time. Often, dies were sold between manufacturers so similar if not the same forms and styles appear from one manufacturer to another. Perhaps, Pairpoint bought this older spooner form from another company (the heyday of vase shaped spooners was the 1850’s and 60’s) and then added more fashionable handles to the older model in order to update the piece. Just a silverplate guess.

Silverplate Trio by the Pairpoint Manufacturing Company, Bedford, Massachusetts, after 1880.

The third Victorian piece in my collection is part of a trio of a creamer, sugar bowl and spooner also by Pairpoint. These trios called “Dessert Sets” emerged around 1890. The style of this set unlike my other Pairpoint spooner is markedly aesthetic in style with its emphasis on naturalism and its nod to Japanese art. Set amongst bamboo, leaves and a variety of seemingly fanciful flowers there is a profusion of birds and insects. It is quite a beautiful and elaborate pattern.

Silverplate spooner, unknown maker, after 1870.

The fourth spooner is a spoon rack and not a vessel to hold the spoons. It can hold 6 teaspoons. These type of spooners are harder to find today and date from the 1870’s onward.

Spooner hung with King Edward teaspoons by Whiting introduced in 1901. These spoons are obviously stylistically not from the period of the spooner.

Sterling Spooner by Gorham with sword date mark for 1915. It is filled with 6 King Edward teaspoons more appropriate for its style and could comfortably hold 12 spoons.

The last spooner in my collection is in sterling by Gorham and dates from 1915. In contrast to the elaborate fussiness of Victorian spooners, this piece is more restrained and simple with a slight Rococo revival feel with its swirling forms. The small, shallow tray form for holding spoons is quite an old type dating back to the early 18th century. The Gorham spooner while reminiscent of this shape is slightly more designed in nature. The footprint of the spooner is a figure 8 to more snugly hold the spoons. Also, the sides of the spooner dip down in the center to allow one to easily remove one teaspoon at a time.

When I entertain, I love to use the items in my silver collection. The spooners are always a conversation piece and are wonderful for holding teaspoons when having a dessert buffet. I hope my spooners convey hospitality to my guests as they did more than 100 years ago to ghosts that perhaps still surround them.